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This paper aims to examine talent management (TM) practices in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) within the hospitality industry. Specifically, the views of SME owner-managers in the hotel and restaurant sector are examined. There appears to be challenges unique to SMEs within this sector (e.g. resource constraints and poor reputation) that can potentially result in a loss of competitive advantage. Therefore, research aligned within this context is an issue of importance.

This paper draws primarily upon semi-structured interviews with five entrepreneurial owner-managers of SMEs in the hotel and restaurant sector. An inductive thematic analysis identified main themes that emerged from the interview data.

Findings revealed that there is a clear commitment towards training and development for employees; however, this initiative is primarily driven by employees identifying their own training needs. The ad hoc TM practices are largely influenced by day-to-day business pressures because of the nature of the hospitality industry. The absence of formalised TM practices, however, does not imply the lack of strategies in place for people management and development.

This paper aims to develop a better understanding of practitioners’ perceptions of TM, strategic TM practices that they may or may not adopt and current TM challenges that they encounter. Key issues relating to defining, attracting, retaining and developing talent are discussed, followed by several practical recommendations.

This paper examines a relatively under-researched yet significant sector of the hospitality industry and provides deeper insights into the dynamics of TM in SMEs.

This paper aims to investigate how marketing tactics can enhance parents' loyalty in the educational context. Building on extant research, it proposes an integrated framework in which perceived marketing tactics are related to school image, which in turn is related to parents' loyalty.

Five marketing tactics are selected. A questionnaire is constructed, and data are collected from 1,200 parents of schoolchildren studying in 60 elementary schools in Taiwan. A multiple regression analysis is conducted to analyze the data.

The results show that the selected marketing tactics all significantly and meaningfully predicted the perception of school image, however promotion tactics were the most effective strategy. In addition school image is an effective predictor of parents' behavior. Finally school image mediates the relationship between marketing tactics and parents' loyalty.

The finding suggests that school administrators can use marketing tactics in order to enhance school image that in turn leads to parents' school choice and word‐of‐mouth.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how information literacy can enhance job performance in the workplace setting.

Building on extant research, an integrated framework in which information literacy is related to person‐job fit which in turn influences job performance is proposed. A survey questionnaire was administered to a convenience sample of 427 current employees in financial institutions in Taiwan. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypotheses.

Results indicate that there is a positive relationship between dimensions of traditional literacy and computer literacy toward person‐job fit. In addition person‐job fit is an effective predictor of job performance. Finally person‐job fit partially mediates the relationship between information literacy and job performance.

This study highlights the importance of information literacy when predicting job performance. Managers could benefit by understanding the antecedents of person‐job fit in a practical sense for organizations' favorable outcomes.

This study aims to examine the relations between teachers' perception of parental involvement and teacher satisfaction. It further aims to investigate how this relationship may be moderated by interpersonal personality traits.

A questionnaire was conducted; participants were 572 classroom teachers who teach at public elementary schools in Taiwan.

Hierarchical regression results indicated that parental involvement at home was considered the most effective factor influencing teachers' satisfaction, followed by teacher‐parent contact. Parental involvement at school was less important. Furthermore, extraversion moderates the relationship partially; teachers low in extraversion perceived home‐based involvement associated with teachers' satisfaction more strongly than those high in extraversion. In contrast, the study found no moderating effect for agreeable teachers.

This article presents an original empirical study that expands the model of parental involvement in order to improve understanding of how teacher's perception of parent involvement is linked to teacher satisfaction.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate the relationship between customer perceptions of public relations (PR) and customer loyalty; to test for the moderating role of brand image in that relationship.

Data were collected in a survey of customers of the insurance industry in Taiwan, using a questionnaire designed on the basis of focus‐group discussions with 30 consumers. Hierarchical regression analysis of data from 367 respondents was used to test two hypotheses.

The results show that consumers' perception of an organisation's PR practice is an antecedent of loyalty. The impact of public relations perception (PRP) on customer loyalty is stronger and more significant when the brand image is favourable. If it is unfavourable, the effect of PRP on customer loyalty is negligible.

This study extends previous research by examining the moderating role of brand image. Further research is indicated, to identify the key moderators of the driving force of PR in relation to customer relationship marketing.

This paper proposes an original eight‐item scale for the assessment of customer PRP activity, which can be applied in practice to measure its effectiveness under different brand‐image conditions.

Among developing countries, the Republic of China in Taiwan (hereinafter Taiwan) has been experiencing economic growth accompanied by improving income distribution. Between 1964 and 1980, the average annual growth rate of the real gross national product was 9.92 per cent (Council for Economic Planning and Development (CEPD), 1982, p. 23). In the same period, the income ratio between the top 20 per cent and the bottom 20 per cent of families dropped from 5.33 to 4.17 and the Gini coefficient decreased from 0.36 to 0.30 (CEPD, 1982, p. 54; Directorate‐General of Budget Accounting and Statistics, 1980, (DGBAS), p. 44). To put it somewhat dif‐ferently, in 1964 the lowest fifth of households received 7.71 per cent of total personal income, and the highest fifth 41.07 per cent. But in 1980, the income share of the lowest fifth increased to 8.82 per cent while that of the highest fifth decreased to 36.80 per cent. The condition of greater equality in income distribution appears more obvious in the capital city of Taipei. In 1981, for instance, its Gini coefficient was estimated to be only 0.28 (Taipei Bureau of Budget, Accounting and Statistics, 1981, (TBBAS), P. 24).

Based on laser-range-finder (LRF) sensing, the control design of location and orientation stabilization for the mobile robot is investigated. However, the practical limitation of the LRF sensing is usually ignored in the control design, which leads to incorrect localization and unexpected control results. The purpose of this study is to design the fuzzy controller subject to the practical limitation on the LRF-based localization for a differentially driven wheeled mobile robot.

First, the Takagi–Sugeno (T-S) fuzzy model is derived from the polar kinematic model of a differentially driven mobile robot. Then, the fuzzy controller is designed to the derived T-S fuzzy kinematic model in accordance with the Lyapunov stabilization theorem. The derived Lyapunov stabilization conditions for the fuzzy control design are expressed as the linear matrix inequality (LMI) form and effectively solved by LMI tools. The practical limitation on the LRF-based localization is also expressed as the LMI form and simultaneously solved with the control design.

The location and posture stabilization experiments are carried out on a mobile robot with LRF-based localization to prove the effectiveness of the proposed T-S fuzzy model-based control design. Furthermore, the ground truth experiment evaluates the accuracy of LRF-based localization.

The contribution of this study is to develop the fuzzy control law for a differentially driven wheeled mobile robot under the practical limitation on LRF-based localization. The proposed control design can be applied to other robots with practical limitations on the sensors.