This research note examines how non-disabled frontline hotel employees perceive colleagues with disabilities through an ableism lens. Drawing on 32 semi-structured interviews with employees of a multinational hospitality company across Southern and Eastern Europe, the findings reveal two broad evaluative framings: success narratives and challenge narratives. Within each, perceptions differed in the locus of ableist evaluation, with disability becoming relevant indirectly through evaluations of work performance or work redistribution associated with disability-related arrangements, or directly as the basis for evaluating employees or their achievements. Combining these dimensions, the study develops a four-part typology comprising Normative Success, Exceptionalism, Perceived Burden and Disability Attribution. The findings show that both success and challenge narratives can encompass distinct forms of ableism, extending hospitality disability-employment research beyond broad benefits/challenges framings of disability employment. Practical implications arising from these findings are offered.
As climate-related risks intensify and environmental policy becomes increasingly uncertain, understanding how firms adjust their financial policies to climate policy uncertainty has become increasingly important. This paper examines whether corporate cash holdings respond nonlinearly to climate policy uncertainty (CPU). Using a panel of U.S. nonfinancial, non-utility firms over 1987-2023 and a news-based CPU index, we estimate polynomial specifications, complemented by a stacked event analysis around five major climate policy events, to capture heterogeneity across levels of uncertainty and firm exposure. The results reveal a fitted U-shaped pattern within the observed range of CPU: cash holdings decline by about 1.5 percentage points of assets across the central range of the CPU distribution and rise only at high CPU levels. Interpreted through real-options and precautionary-liquidity mechanisms, the pattern differs with firms’ investment opportunities, and firms with greater predetermined carbon exposure hold more cash after major climate policy events, suggesting that the liquidity response to CPU varies with the level of uncertainty and with firm characteristics. The findings contribute to the literature on policy uncertainty and corporate liquidity management and offer implications for the design of predictable climate regulation and for assessing firms’ capacity to adjust to transition risk.
Tourism and hospitality businesses face strategic challenges managing destination competitiveness when popular sites experience capacity constraints threatening profitability while alternative destinations remain underutilised. This study investigates how demarketing approaches combined with digital technologies create competitive advantages through visitor redistribution, applying social comparison theory to consumer decision-making. Critically, we position demarketing not merely as a set of marketing communications tactics, but as a demand governance instrument that mediates competing stakeholder interests—balancing destination sustainability, community equity, and smart tourism objectives. The study addresses two under-explored questions: (a) how demarketing functions as a demand management counterpart to carrying capacity frameworks; and (b) how technology mediates—rather than simply enables—the activation of social comparison processes in shaping tourist redistribution behaviour. Multi-focus group interviews with Egypt’s tourism stakeholders—tourists, hospitality managers, and destination officials—besides empirical contextualisation of International Benchmarks and Digital Infrastructure for demarketing examined responses to overcrowding and technology-enabled demarketing effectiveness. Findings reveal upward social comparisons and FOMO mechanisms significantly influence destination choices when integrated with digital demarketing interventions. Technology-driven personalisation successfully shifted preferences toward alternative destinations through targeted messaging emphasising exclusive experiences, with mobile recommendations proving effective when positioned as insider knowledge.
The dynamic pressures induced by earthquake forces on a pair of rigid walls retaining steel strip-reinforced elastic soil over bedrock, are investigated through an analytical/numerical solution procedure under plane strain conditions. The reinforced soil is treated as an elastic continuum consisting of two phases: the elastic soil matrix in plane strain and the horizontally arranged steel strips under axial deformation. Thus, there are three governing equations of motion in terms of displacements: two for the elastic soil matrix and one for the elastic steel strips, coupled through interaction forces. Assuming time harmonic seismic excitation and expanding the displacements in Fourier sine and cosine series with respect to the horizontal coordinate, one can reduce the governing system of partial differential equations of motion to ordinary ones with respect to the vertical coordinate. Solving this system, the seismic pressure on the wall as well as the shear force and bending moment at the wall base are determined analytically. The response to transient earthquake forces is obtained numerically through Fourier synthesis. The employment of the solution to obtain results for the special case of the unreinforced soil and the comparison of those results against existing ones in the literature serve to verify that solution. Parametric studies are then presented to investigate the effects of soil reinforcement on the seismic response of the wall-soil system.
The right to education is fundamental and must be provided to all without restriction. Distance learning methodologies present key learning opportunities for those with limited access to conventional education, such as prison inmates, and come in response to the demand for new solutions in the field of educational activities. The ever-increasing need for new forms of education highlights distance learning in prison schools as a key pillar of the new learning process. Education in prisons as a way of reintegrating offenders is an essential means of changing behavior patterns as well as for acquiring knowledge and developing-improving skills, while aiming at the smooth professional integration of inmates. The present study presents a review of distance education in prisons, as well as qualitative research examining aspects related to distance education in a prison of central Greece, which includes observation as well as interviews with thirty-six inmates. The results of the qualitative research show that Greek language courses are essential for reading, writing and communication with more teaching time for developing-improving the skills of the inmates. Distance education is an essential tool for inmates to acquire the necessary skills for social reintegration and smooth professional integration.
