Despite being controversial, teacher tenure policies are understudied, particularly in higher education contexts outside the Western world. Using semi-structured interviews with 15 university faculty members, this study explored how tenure systems influence the teaching practices, motivations, and job satisfaction of language teachers in Macau's universities. It was revealed that Macau implemented competitive, “up or out” tenure policies that were based on research output. Faculty were anxious as vague expectations heightened research priorities over teaching quality and student support. Requirements also strained collegial relationships as faculty goals focused on promotion. Veteran professors demonstrated resilience, maintaining intrinsic motivation despite policies. They advocated improving policies by promoting transparency, balancing workloads, accommodating disciplines, and communicating effectively. Using empirical data, this study identifies key policy implications for supporting teacher motivation while balancing inequality constraints. It provides empirical insight into optimizing tenure for teacher engagement and fulfillment.
Gastronomic tourism is a form of travel that has gained relevance today, making it crucial to understand the promotion and management strategies in specific destinations. This systematic review article aims to analyze these strategies, highlighting the importance of cultural authenticity and collaboration between local actors. The methodology used is aligned with a descriptive and correlational approach, using criteria of exhaustiveness and relevance to review ethnographic research and scientific articles. The results reveal the influence of ancestral knowledge on cultural tourism, as well as the challenges of food heritage and food transculturation. In this sense, the need to design promotional strategies that promote traditionality, identity and cultural empowerment in local communities is highlighted. In conclusion, this study provides a comprehensive understanding of gastronomic tourism promotion and management strategies, underscoring the importance of preserving cultural authenticity and promoting local collaboration for the sustainable development of gastronomic tourism.
In this paper, a study developed at the University of Seniors in Aragón is presented. The Sono-libro, used as an innovative resource, is assessed in the proposal with an educational and pedagogical purpose. The aim is to understand the motivational and learning perception variation after the incorporation of the Sono-libro in the sample. In this quantitative longitudinal design study, the listening habits of the participants are comparatively analyzed at two moments: The first data collection took place before the implementation of the proposal, and the second collection occurred after the proposal. The sample consists of 116 subjects, with 64.16% being women and an average age of 66 years of age. Data was obtained through a validated ad hoc questionnaire judged by experts. The results of the data collections showed an increase in both motivation and perception of the learning obtained, indicating the benefits of incorporating digital resources into contexts of adult students.
Underground station passenger flow is large, the number of parcels carried by passengers is large and varied, and the parcels carried have an impact on the fire hazard and evacuation of the station. In order to determine the weights of the passenger luggage risk and environmental factor index system in the fire risk evaluation of underground stations in a more realistic way, an optimized and improved hierarchical analysis method for determining the judgement matrix is proposed, which improves the traditional nine-scaled method and adopts the three-scaled method for the four major categories of luggage, namely, handbags, rucksacks, portable power tools and trolley cases. The advantage of this method is that there is no need for consistency judgement in determining packages with a wide range of types and uncertain contents, thus simplifying the calculation. Meanwhile, the reasonableness and reliability of the method is verified by combining it with an actual metro station fire risk assessment system.
The interest in using project management office (PMO) services in organizations to manage their construction projects is growing in light of rising economic, technological, and social developments based on their ability to achieve organizational goals while avoiding risks. Accordingly, organizations use PMO services to manage their technical and financial project issues to periodically evaluate PMO performance and services in a scientific, practical, and measurable way to ensure successful project path via PMO. Therefore, this research aims to develop a performance evaluation system that enables organizations to follow up and evaluate the PMO performance to ensure that PMO manages the organizations’ expectations and goals successfully according to certain quality, scope, and cost. The study builds on significant findings in PMO competence indexes as evaluation matrix, which includes five basic categories with 136 indexes covering the project life cycle. The matrix was developed based on literature analysis and supplemented with experts’ interviews in construction management. The developed robust competency-based index (RCI) for directive PMO supports the organizations to conduct client satisfaction, correction, or partial/total change of the PMO’s competence flow within five construction project life cycle and process, i.e. governance, portfolio, information, execution, and contract issues.
Nowadays investors are measuring the performances of a business organization not only based on their operating efficiency but also fulfilling their social responsibility. At least the investors need to know whether the activities of the business have any adverse impact on the society and environment. This study explores the accountability of the business from the social and environmental context. This empirical study tends to investigate the nature of the ownership structure that influences the environmental disclosure of a business entity. Based on the sample of fifty-five DSE-listed textile companies, this study used multiple regression to assess the causal relationship between the ownership structure and corporate environmental disclosure. Moreover, this cross-sectional study also considers the agency theory and stakeholder theory to explain the relationship between the ownership structure and environmental disclosure. The findings indicate that corporate environmental disclosure is positively influenced by foreign ownership and institutional ownership whereas director ownership and public ownership have no significant association with the environmental disclosure. These insightful results challenge conventional assumptions and highlight the need for a nuanced understanding of the factors that drive environmental reporting practices in the context of an emerging economy. The main contribution of this article lies in its provision of empirical evidence from an emerging economy, Bangladesh, which helps in understanding sustainable practices in a global context. Additionally, it aids in developing effective corporate governance policies and strategies tailored to similar emerging economies by recognizing the role of ownership structures in influencing environmental accountability. These findings further assist policymakers, managers, and other sustainability advocates in understanding how different ownership structures affect corporate environmental disclosure.
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