Commercial Stakeholders Research Articles

Economic impacts of tourism in protected areas of Brazil

ABSTRACT Protected areas (PAs) are globally considered as a key strategy for biodiversity conservation and provision of ecosystem services. Economic impact analyses generate quantifiable estimates of the tourism interdependencies which provide a tangible understanding of effects on local and regional economies. Federal PAs of Brazil are the object of the research based on the Money Generation Model2 (MGM2) methodology along with modifications to address particular issues in a developing country context. The significance of this research is to assist managers, inform policy-makers, conservation and commercial stakeholders, local communities, and the public at large of the value that PAs serve for conservation as well as engines for benefit-sharing. Results identified that each dollar Brazil invested in the PA system produced $7 in economic benefits. Also, the total economic contributions generated more than $1.3 billion in total sales, $342 million in personal income, $473 million in value added to the GDP, and supported 43,602 jobs nationally. The study reinforced the view that economic impacts of tourism influences PAs as well as indirectly to other businesses and the local communities.

Tourism operators’ perspectives of environmental supply of guided tours in national parks

Environmental supply is a concept that links tourism demand to the sustainability of park offerings of natural features, physical attributes, management initiatives and/or governance policies that influence environmental conservation and protection of ecological and cultural environments. This study presents results of commercial tour operator's perspectives of environmental supply in two highly used Canadian Rocky Mountain national parks. Understanding of environmental supply, from a commercial stakeholder perspective, contributes positively to park management actions regarding commercial visitor activities and behaviours in protected national areas. Tour operators must supply quality visitor experiences while operating within a different policy environment than required by other tourism operators providing guided tours outside of park boundaries. This paper includes the results of a four-stage mixed methodology including one-on-one field interviews and surveys targeting commercial tour guiding businesses operating within Banff and Jasper national parks from 2011 through 2015. Each interview included formal questions, ranging from a description of the types of activities included during tours to actual or perceived limitations placed on operations due to managers’ considerations about environmental supply. Results presented are from the final 2015 study, reflecting 17 randomly sampled formal interviews and 41 completed on-line surveys with representatives of tour companies operating within Banff or Jasper national parks; this equates to a useable return rate of 43.6%. Both qualitative and quantitative results are discussed and grouped for presentation. Management implicationsResearch informs decision making by providing the following:1.Understanding of how tourism operators perceive their roles and abilities and how these relate to creating a quality visitor experience, a sustainable business and assurance for the conservation of natural resources within a protected park environment;2.Understanding of the concept of environmental supply and identifying which characteristics of environmental supply are important for guided tour operators who are attempting to meet park environmental management standards while also meeting commercial tourism demands;3.Identification of possible ‘weak links’ or informational gaps in a government agency's process-driven approach to managing tours and guided recreational activities in national parks; and4.Demonstration of the value of social science research in illuminating the link between practice and policy as it relates to tourism and environment for protected areas.

Commercial stakeholders in international economic dispute resolution and the issue of adjudicatory independence

The article discusses the problem of influence exerted by commercial actors in international trade disputes and consequences of this phenomenon for positions adopted by adjudicators. It explores the role of commercial stakeholders inasmuch as they comprise a driving force behind state action, and examines procedural options available to those stakeholders. The issue of adjudicatory independence and neutrality is considered in the context of involved industries and their interests as the non-party spiritus movens behind WTO dispute settlement processes. Related procedural aspects, such as confidentiality/transparency of proceedings and the possibilities for participation of non-party actors, are also examined. It is argued that WTO litigation is often only one track among several available to the stakeholders in the pursuit of their interests. As a consequence, the problem of forum shopping is also raised. In this vein, the standards of the WTO Appellate Body in the area under discussion are set against those of investment and commercial arbitration (as the institutions and rules designed for the latter are also being used for trade controversies, as evidenced in the Softwood Lumber LCIA arbitrations). Consequently, the problem of establishing standards of adjudicatory independence is deemed a significant factor in strategic selection of the most advantageous forum for dispute resolution.

Building Early Intervention Services for Psychotic Disorders: A Primer for Early Adopters in the U.S.

Recent developments in the U.S. healthcare policy signal a growing commitment to early intervention for psychotic disorders. A growing international and U.S. research database supports the effectiveness of specialty team-based models adapted to care for young individuals with recent onset psychosis. The RAISE (Recovery After an Initial Schizophrenia Episode) initiative, sponsored by the NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health), has defined such Coordinated Specialty Care (CSC) services as a new benchmark for care across the U.S., and published a variety of resources to support dissemination. Funding initiatives led by the center for Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services (SAMHSA), and support from other national organizations, have catalyzed interest in community agencies across the country. We offer guidance to such early adopters and supplement extant resources with a focus on the process of setting up such programs. Adopters have numerous decisions to make. These include determining admission criteria, structuring care processes to maximize impact, choosing from several empirically based interventions, and resourcing workforce development. We provide a guide to salient resources, and lessons learned from a decade old CSC, to aid in these complex decisions. We end with a discussion of limitations in the current knowledge base, and the need for responsive research. Early intervention services can engender application of demonstrably effective treatment, while also providing platforms for research to improve and develop new treatments. Collaborations between a wide variety of government, academic and commercial stakeholders will be essential to realize the transformative public health impact of early intervention for psychotic disorders. Keywords: Psychosis, early intervention, first episode, schizophrenia, coordinated specialty care.

Wonks and geeks: examining commercial technology stakeholders’ perceptions of and interactions with public policy

This article investigates the challenges that face the intersection of commercial technology and public policy. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with thirty stakeholders—company executives and investors—in the commercial technology community to understand their perceptions of public policy and their current interactions with policymakers and policy analysts. This research focuses on start-up founders, start-up chief executive officers, and the venture capitalists who fund commercial technology start-ups. Given the dearth of research investigating how the commercial technology and policy worlds interact, the study results offer unique insight into the perceptions of commercial technology stakeholders. Conclusions discuss where opportunities may exist for improving engagement with policymakers and analysts.

Applying a Communicating Vessels Framework to CSR Value Co-creation: Empirical Evidence From Professional Team Sport Organizations

Despite the increasing number and significance of charitable foundations in various business sectors, their role in cocreating corporate social responsibility (CSR) value remains unclear. This paper identifies CSR value cocreation in professional team sport organizations (PTSOs) and answers three key research questions: (a) Why have PTSOs developed charitable foundations as their means toward CSR value cocreation? (b) What CSR-related resources do PTSOs and their charitable foundations integrate? and (c) How do they manage, share, and transfer such resources to cocreate CSR value? Drawing theoretical insights from service dominant logic and consumer culture theory—and using empirical data from 47 semistructured interviews of UK-based professional football (soccer) clubs—this study develops a communicating vessels framework to illustrate the role of charitable foundations in the CSR value cocreation process. Through four tentative CSR value cocreation levels of relationship (bolt-on, cooperative, controlled, and strategic) the study suggests several internal strategies that can enhance the level of collaboration between founders and foundations. These include information sharing through customer relationship management (CRM) systems and social media platforms; staff sharing or flexible movement across the organizations; quality assurance agreements; flexible team cooperation; partnership protocols with social, media, cultural, and commercial stakeholders; and cotraining of personnel.

The Stigma Turbine: A Theoretical Framework for Conceptualizing and Contextualizing Marketplace Stigma

Stigmas, or discredited personal attributes, emanate from social perceptions of physical characteristics, aspects of character, and “tribal” associations (e.g., race; Goffman 1963 ). Extant research has emphasized the perspective of the stigma target, with some scholars exploring how social institutions shape stigma. Yet the ways stakeholders within the sociocommercial sphere create, perpetuate, or resist stigma remain overlooked. The authors introduce and define marketplace stigma as the labeling, stereotyping, and devaluation by and of commercial stakeholders (consumers, companies and their employees, stockholders, and institutions) and their offerings (products, services, and experiences). The authors offer the Stigma Turbine as a unifying conceptual framework that locates marketplace stigma within the broader sociocultural context and illuminates its relationship to forces that exacerbate or blunt stigma. In unpacking the Stigma Turbine, the authors reveal the critical role that market stakeholders can play in (de)stigmatization, explore implications for marketing practice and public policy, and offer a research agenda to further understanding of marketplace stigma and stakeholder welfare.

Why media representations of corporations matter for public health policy: a scoping review

BackgroundMedia representations play a crucial role in informing public and policy opinions about the causes of, and solutions to, ill-health. This paper reviews studies analysing media coverage of non-communicable disease (NCD) debates, focusing on how the industries marketing commodities that increase NCD risk are represented.MethodsA scoping review identified 61 studies providing information on media representations of NCD risks, NCD policies and tobacco, alcohol, processed food and soft drinks industries. The data were narratively synthesized to describe the sample, media depictions of industries, and corporate and public health attempts to frame the media debates.ResultsThe findings indicate that: (i) the limited research that has been undertaken is dominated by a focus on tobacco; (ii) comparative research across industries/risk-factors is particularly lacking; and (iii) coverage tends to be dominated by two contrasting frames and focuses either on individual responsibilities (‘market justice’ frames, often promoted by commercial stakeholders) or on the need for population-level interventions (‘social justice’ frames, frequently advanced by public health advocates).ConclusionsEstablishing the underlying frameworks is crucial for the analysis of media representation of corporations, as they reflect the strategies that respective actors use to influence public health debates and decision making. The potential utility of media research lies in the insights that it can provide for public health policy advocates about successful framing of public health messages and strategies to counter frames that undermine public health goals. A better understanding of current media debates is of paramount importance to improving global health.

Brave New City: the image in the urban data-space

In the last two decades, mobile, locative and wireless media have profoundly reconfigured our experience of the image as well as our experience of the urban space. Based on a critical revision of one of the first accounts of this new experience of the city, Lev Manovich’s ‘Poetics of Augmented Space’ (2006), and on Adrian Mackenzie’s concept of ‘wirelessness’ (2011), the authors define the urban as a data-space where physical and digital data, bodies and signals commute and connect via mobile devices and wireless networks. In this urban data-space, the screen, as our local access point to the networks, coincides with the image as the visual part of multitudinous data exchanges. In this Brave New City, where we are permanently assisted/monitored by a plethora of digital devices, software agents and sensors, the role of the image is no longer to screen the world but to screen our data, turning us into an ambulant real-time database, a mobile corps de données. The data gathered from each and every move in the city allows for infinite and invisible operations of surveillance and control by both government and commercial stakeholders. This hidden operativity is all the more powerful as it is dissimulated in the form of proliferating image-screens.

Rebranding Macau: views of cultural industry insiders

Purpose – This paper aims to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing the performing arts as one element in changing the destination image of the Macau special administrative region from that of the Las Vegas of the East to a “World Centre of Tourism and Leisure”. The context is of particular interest as rebranding is typically associated with negative or outdated images, whereas Macau’s existing brand is strong and associated with positive tourism revenues. Design/methodology/approach – Semi-structured in-depth interviews with frontline participants in Macau’s performing arts sector are utilized to evaluate the relevant re-branding strategies and goals of the city’s administration. In-depth interviews focus on understanding policies through the thoughts and experiences of respondents. They are particularly useful in cases where insiders are likely to be better informed than others with respect to policy issues. Findings – Three main themes related to the use of the performing arts as a vehicle for destination rebranding are explored. Findings suggest that few elements common to successful branding campaigns are evident in the approach of the Macau administration. Shortcomings are evident, for example, in communication, infrastructure development, long-term planning and the allocation and monitoring of funding. Research limitations/implications – Although qualitative research relies on rich data from small numbers, the study focuses only on the views of informed insiders in the performing arts. Input from commercial stakeholders and higher-level policy makers would broaden the perspective. Practical implications – The findings are relevant for any destination wishing to alter or update its image. Originality/value – Cultural aspects are increasingly utilized in destination branding. This study is one of only a few which focuses on the performing arts sector.

Integrated approach to vessel energy efficiency

Energy efficiency improvements in the shipping industry are being driven by economics, compliance and customer requirements. Whilst various technological and operation improvements are known and available, with many being demonstrated to be cost effective and with savings reported in the industry, their take up in the world fleet remains low. This low take-up can be considered due to many different barriers, as explored in various research studies. However the aim of this paper is first to understand how these barriers are created by considering how ship operations function day-to-day within the context of mainstream business practice. A holistic view of operations is required and is presented in this paper, including consideration of business focus areas in parallel with the functions of technical, operational and commercial stakeholders. With this laid-out, gaps within existing operations are discussed in relation to areas for practical improvements. From here, non-prescriptive mechanisms to enable a desired future are proposed; including the integration of mandates, processes and systems. Case studies are given throughout the paper using hull and propeller maintenance as a recurring example of a typical decision making processes and best practices.

Large streamlined trials in cardiovascular disease

In the search for new and better therapies, reliable evidence of efficacy and safety—usually provided from large-scale randomized trials—is essential to support licensing, inform guidelines, and change clinical practice. However, the size, duration, complexity, and costs of conducting contemporary clinical trials have risen steadily. This coupled with an apparently diminishing likelihood of a positive trial has raised concerns about return on investment to the point of restricting drug development in cardiovascular diseases (CVD).1 More efficient ways to conduct randomized trials need to be developed with engagement by the various stakeholders. There is a widespread perception that complex clinical trials designs and exhaustive data collection are associated with an improved quality of clinical research. Emphasis on eliminating any potential source of error has made trials more complex and bureaucratic, resulting in increased cost. Greater complexity and cost have restricted the size of trials and investigator and patient willingness and ability to participate. These challenges are multifactorial; they include risk aversion from industry and regulators with an attendant bureaucracy. Commercial stakeholders who benefit financially from over-regulation and increasingly complex trial design and over zealous data collection further exacerbate these issues ( Table 1 ). It is estimated that costs could be reduced by between 30 and 80% through a variety of simple measures to streamline trials.2 The current position where we have many potentially promising new treatments but the requirement to spend hundreds of millions of euros to bring them to market is untenable. There is an urgent need to reverse the trend of increasing trial complexity and cost such that more clinically relevant questions can be answered quickly and efficiently, ultimately to improve patient outcomes. View this table: Table 1 Factors contributing to the increased complexity and cost of clinical trials In our view, the design and conduct of clinical trials should focus on the most …

Evidence-based policy for controlling antimicrobial resistance in the food chain in Denmark

Emergence of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in the animal reservoir forms a risk for human health. The use of antimicrobials in animals is the major cause of development of AMR in bacteria in animals. In the 1990s, the use of antimicrobials in animals, particularly as a growth promoter, led to alarming levels of AMR in many countries. This paper analyses the emergence of AMR in Denmark in terms of contributing factors that formed fertile ground from which AMR could develop. New technologies in combination with scientific unknowns led to the unexpected development of cross-resistance and an uncertainty about transmission to and risk for humans. Conflict of interests and varying susceptibility to risk between agriculture, health and commercial stakeholders complicated intervention. In addition, unintended economic incentives from old legislation resulted in a situation where the use of antimicrobials in general was stimulated. Complications of alarming high levels of AMR in animals, and a general discontent about this situation (including with farmers and vets) demanded a solution. National surveillance in DANMAP involving all stakeholders from the farm-to-fork food chain was setup to counteract scientific unknowns and conflicts of interest; new legislation was developed; and unintended economic incentives reduced. The current analysis may help to better understand the AMR problem in general and what may be done to counteract it.

Hitting the target but missing the point: the case of area-based regeneration

Area-based regeneration projects have captured the imagination of diverse assemblages of community actors, governmental interests, and commercial stakeholders around the world. Their appeal derives from claims that they are exemplary instruments for combating intertwined social, economic, and environmental issues in an integrated manner. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of such initiatives remains contentious and continues to provoke divergent views. In the midst of an era of fiscal austerity, demands for increasing “returns on investments” and maximizing “value for money” have risen to the forefront. This article investigates an area-based regeneration initiative in Europe that has been lauded for successfully achieving its regeneration outputs. The research examines whether hitting narrowly constructed (economic) targets may be missing the point of yielding holistic (community) outcomes. Of broader international and theoretical significance, the merits of output-driven regeneration strategies are questioned.

Error Tolerant Multimedia Stream Processing: There's Plenty of Room at the Top (of the System Stack)

There is a growing realization that the expected fault rates and energy dissipation stemming from increases in CMOS integration will lead to the abandonment of traditional system reliability in favor of approaches that offer reliability to hardware-induced errors across the application, runtime support, architecture, device and integrated-circuit (IC) layers. Commercial stakeholders of multimedia stream processing (MSP) applications, such as information retrieval, stream mining systems, and high-throughput image and video processing systems already feel the strain of inadequate system-level scaling and robustness under the always-increasing user demand. While such applications can tolerate certain imprecision in their results, today's MSP systems do not support a systematic way to exploit this aspect for cross-layer system resilience. However, research is currently emerging that attempts to utilize the error-tolerant nature of MSP applications for this purpose. This is achieved by modifications to all layers of the system stack, from algorithms and software to the architecture and device layer, and even the IC digital logic synthesis itself. Unlike conventional processing that aims for worst-case performance and accuracy guarantees, error-tolerant MSP attempts to provide guarantees for the expected performance and accuracy. In this paper we review recent advances in this field from an MSP and a system (layer-by-layer) perspective, and attempt to foresee some of the components of future cross-layer error-tolerant system design that may influence the multimedia and the general computing landscape within the next ten years.

The mediating role of environmental innovation in the relationship between environmental management and firm performance in a multi-stakeholder environment

Nowadays, firms are increasingly challenged to bridge potentially conflicting economic interests of primary commercial stakeholders and sustainability demands from secondary non-commercial stakeholder groups. While a number of firms view investments in environmental management as disconnected from their value-creating activities, others have reported achieved cost efficiency and differentiation advantages. Prior research suggests that environmental innovation might be the missing link between environmental management and firm performance. However, the mediating effect of environmental innovation in the relationship between environmental management and a firm's performance had not been empirically tested so far. Our paper provides a contribution by conducting an empirical investigation into this possible mediating effect. Although the presumed mediating role of environmental innovation suggests that it is influenced by internal environmental management, environmental innovation literature is especially concerned with the role of external stakeholders in environmental innovation. This study investigates the role of the engagement of stakeholders such as supply chain partners, industry, and public authorities in environmental impact reduction. We hypothesise that environmental innovation positively mediates the relationship between environmental management and firm performance, and that the engagement of stakeholders has a positive impact on environmental innovation. The research model was tested with a variance-based structural equation model using data from 90 Dutch food and beverage firms. The results confirm the positive mediating effect of environmental process innovation on the relationship between environmental management and cost efficiency advantage. Environmental product innovation contributes to a differentiation advantage but it is not significantly influenced by environmental management. So we could not support a positive mediating effect of environmental product innovation on the relationship between environmental management and differentiation advantage. Instead, environmental collaboration with supply chain partners has a strong positive impact on environmental product innovation. It also positively influences environmental process innovation but this influence is much weaker than the influence of internal environmental management. Our findings can assist managers in their decision making regarding the implementation of environmental innovations and environmental collaboration with external parties. The study is also relevant to policy makers as a tool to assess the appropriateness of their policy.

Building Bridges to the Future of Medicine: Recommendations for Boosting Development of Novel and Companion Diagnostics

Evaluating the prospects for 'personalized healthcare' has become topical at the 10-year anniversary of the first results from the Human Genome Project. The coincidence of this milestone with a period of global financial difficulty is unfortunate, but industry has signaled its willingness to invest in this new medical paradigm in order to address the problems of high drug candidate attrition as well as escalating healthcare and R&D costs. For diagnostics manufacturers, justifying the ever-growing costs of development without an appropriate framework to provide reasonable return on investment is extremely challenging. Regulators have made good progress in defining what will satisfy current regulatory mandates, but there is still far to go to create conditions that would stimulate investment. My personal perspective is that personalized healthcare represents a solution rather than a problem and herein I describe the bottlenecks slowing development of novel diagnostics from the perspective of a willing commercial stakeholder.

Navigating the perfect [data] storm

Bioscience has recently undergone a series of knowledge-based and technological revolutions. A critical consequence has been increasing recognition of the need to invest in infrastructure. Good access to data (and samples) from multiple studies is axiomatic to the value of this infrastructure. Access must be streamlined, secure, and based upon transparent and ‘fair’ decision making. It must be clear who has created and who has used which data. Ethico-legal policies and guidelines, which reflect dominant local cultural and societal norms, must take account of the increasingly global nature of bioscience research. A robust data infrastructure must also be attentive to the translational aims and social impact of its knowledge generation. In order to maintain the trust of its constituency – the general public as well as professional, political, commercial stakeholders – it must develop mechanisms to take account of all of these perspectives. These considerations form the basis of an emerging data economy. Building on extant achievements and pursuing the ideas outlined here could revolutionise the way we use and manage large-scale data. They have critical implications for biomedical and public health research communities and will be of central relevance for healthcare managers and policy makers, governments and industry. However, if the major challenges are to be met we must continue to invest,both nationally and internationally, in developing the cooperative infrastructures that provide a complementary foil to competitive resourcing mechanisms that drive hypothesis-driven science.

An Academic-Industry Collaboration to Develop an EHR Module for Primary Care.

Introduction:By forging partnerships among academia, industry and other stakeholders in health care IT, it is hoped that more user-friendly and efficient HIT solutions will become available soon. Although this shared stakeholders approach appears effective and synergistic, there has been minimal prior work that describes such collaborations.Understanding this collaboration is particularly important due to the different perspectives and priorities of academic and commercial stakeholders. In this report we share our collaborative experience of developing and delivering the Geriatric Enhancement Module (GEM), a software application comprised of a 7-item questionnaire designed to generate discussions among staff, providers and patients regarding quality of life issues. Methods:Our academic-industry collaborators worked cooperatively to select and recruit three practices for the study, iteratively developed the GEM questions and available responses, and devised the method of delivering the questions within our pilot practices by participating jointly in a series of face to face meetings and conference calls during 12 months out of the two year study period. Findings: One of the most important lessons learned is that despite the vendor’s computer programming aimed at delivering the module in a specific way for a particular set of patients, practices figured out ways to control the delivery of the module or tailor it for their own purposes in ways that certain automated features, such as “popping” up for all patients aged 50 or over, were not being used in the way that the vendor had thought. Therefore, we experimented with free-text software as an alternative method for delivery.

Stakeholder Evaluation Priorities for Demonstrating Marine Protected Area Effectiveness at the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve, Canada

This study addresses the often advocated involvement of stakeholder groups in all aspects of marine protected area management including the development of an evaluation program. In the absence of clear management objectives, the study investigates the opinions of five non-aboriginal stakeholder groups on the importance, purpose and content of an evaluation at Pacific Rim National Park on the West coast of Canada. Information needs of stakeholders are identified in an open question format as well as based on a list of pre-defined indicators. Findings indicate that both approaches identify unique indicators. Indicators revealed in the open-ended format are more detailed and reflect the local context of the park reserve. Presenting a list of indicators, however, illustrates evaluation priorities more clearly as frequencies of responses for priority indicators are higher. Statistical analysis reveals general agreement among the five groups on the importance, purpose, and content of an evaluation. Only a few differences are obvious in the choice of evaluation indicators between commercial and non-commercial stakeholder groups.