Why China's real estate crisis should make the global travel industry nervous

S53

Why China's real estate crisis should make the global travel industry nervous     Once upon a time – in 2019 – tourists from China were among the best-traveled in the world. They collectively spent more than US$250 billion abroad – nearly twice as much as their nearest competitors, the Americans – and logged more than 150 million departures on international flights that year.The COVID-19 pandemic shook the Chinese travel industry, as it did the world’s. But despite the easing of pandemic restrictions – and a global tourism rebound – Chinese tourists have been slow to return to the global skies. The reason, interestingly enough, could be found in the very land and houses Chinese planes fly over. Continued here

S1

The Courage to Be Yourself: Virginia Woolf on How to Hear Your Soul     “Beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme difficulty of being oneself.” Continued here

S2

Don't Eliminate Your Middle Managers     Organizations have long seen middle management as ripe for cutting whenever times get tight, and the current moment is no exception. The authors believe that this is a costly mistake. Human capital, they say, is at least as important as financial capital, and middle managers, who recruit and develop an organization’s employees, are the most important asset of all—essential to navigating rapid, complex change. They can make work more meaningful, interesting, and productive, and they’re crucial for true organizational transformation. But if managers are to fulfill this promise, leaders must reimagine their roles, push to more fully understand their value, and train, coach, and inspire them to realize their potential as organizational linchpins. Continued here

S3

Our Guide to the Fall 2023 Issue     Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Top Takeaways: Research shows that innovators have a poor track record of predicting which of their own ideas will result in breakthroughs. This matters because some ideas that appear to be incremental at first eventually prove to be blockbusters. Discovery is a necessary first step, but it is not sufficient for assessing how promising an opportunity might become. Rather, taking more ideas to incubation gives both the company and the broader market a chance to learn about them and their potential. It also allows for unanticipated use cases to emerge. Continued here

S4

Leading AI Is Still Leading | Abbie Lundberg     Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Generative AI has consumed a lot of media and business oxygen this year, and rightly so. Not only are its capabilities novel and impressive, but it might be the biggest leap in the “consumerization” of information technology since the emergence of the iPhone in 2007. Anyone with a browser can create content, sound, and images with AI — artificial intelligence in the hands of the masses! Business leaders are eager to understand the impact, good and bad, that it will have on their organizations. Continued here

S5

Protecting Society From AI Harms: Amnesty International's Matt Mahmoudi and Damini Satija (Part Two)     Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.Our special report on innovation systems will help leaders guide teams that rely on virtual collaboration, explores the potential of new developments, and provides insights on how to manage customer-led innovation.At Amnesty Tech, a division of human rights organization Amnesty International, Damini Satija and Matt Mahmoudi leverage their expertise in technology and public policy to examine the use of AI in the public sector and its impact on citizens worldwide. Continued here

S6

Why are CEOs still so intent on taking worker attendance?     Employers have dangled all sorts of perks – free food, concerts and on-site yoga – to entice employees back to the office, with varying degrees of success. Now, some are taking a more drastic approach: tying in-person office attendance to employee performance reviews.Google and JPMorgan have each told staff that office attendance will be factored into performance evaluations. The US law firm Davis Polk informed employees that fewer days in the office would result in lower bonuses. And Meta and Amazon both told employees they're now monitoring badge swipes, with potential consequences for workers who don't comply with attendance policies – including job loss. Increasingly, workers across many jobs and sectors appear to be barrelling towards the same fate.   Continued here

S7

Pain Hustlers review: Emily Blunt is 'the only reason to watch this'     Don't confuse the recent Painkiller, an earnest Netflix series about a fictionalised pharmaceutical company and the opioid epidemic, with the new Netflix film Pain Hustlers, which has a similar story about a different fictionalised company and a tone that goes for entertaining long before it turns earnest too. Why the creators of one of these projects didn't flinch and change the title is a good question.And while Pain Hustlers is a perfectly fine title, the film probably should have been called Liza Drake, the name of the sales rep played by Emily Blunt, who single-handedly almost saves this tone-deaf drama from itself. As the rags-to-riches heroine who finds herself in the midst of a morally compromised situation, Blunt creates a character who is engaging, smarter than she's given credit for, and hungry to improve her hardscrabble life as a single mother with an adolescent daughter. She makes the film watchable, but is the only reason to watch. Continued here

S8

US response to Gabon and Niger coups suggests need for a new West Africa policy in Washington     Recent coups in the West African nations of Gabon and Niger caught U.S. diplomats a little off guard. They also indicate Washington may need to reassess its policy in the region or risk becoming increasingly irrelevant to the new governments.Despite following similar overthrows of governments in Mali, Burkina Faso and Chad in recent years, the U.S official reaction to the coups in Gabon and Niger has come across to some observers as makeshift and uncertain. Continued here

S9

Antisemitism on Elon Musk's X is surging and dredging up many ancient, defamatory themes of blaming Jews     Since buying Twitter, rebranded as X, billionaire Elon Musk, who calls himself a “free speech absolutist,” has welcomed hatemongers to the platform, including one who recently coined the trending hashtag #BanTheADL. The ADL, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, was founded in 1913 during the trial of Leo Frank, a Jewish factory manager wrongly convicted of murdering one of his young workers. After Georgia Gov. John Slaton commuted Frank’s death sentence to life imprisonment, Frank was lynched. Since then, the ADL has aimed to fight antisemitism and secure “justice not only for Jews but for all people.” Continued here

S10

Looking for your 'calling'? What people get wrong when chasing meaningful work     I am connected to the authors of the Life Worth Living book. They have generously supported my pedagogical efforts in the classroom. I am not directly funded by them, however they did fund a post-doc in our department to aide me in teaching courses that would build upon the class I mention in this article. As a professor, I’m fortunate to teach a course called World Religions for Healthcare Professionals that prepares students for the spiritual and ethical issues they may encounter in their careers. But the class often boils down to life’s big questions: What makes life worth living, and how should we live? How do you find your “calling”? Continued here

S11

How evasive and transmissible is the newest omicron offshoot, BA.2.86, that causes COVID-19? 4 questions answered     The latest variant, or sublineage, of SARS-CoV-2 to emerge on the scene, BA.2.86, has public health experts on alert as COVID-19 hospitalizations begin to rise and the new variant makes its way across the globe. BA.2.86, nicknamed Pirola, is a highly mutated new omicron sublineage of SARS-CoV-2 that was first detected in Denmark in July 2023. The World Health Organization announced that, as of Sept. 6, 2023, BA.2.86 has been detected in 11 countries. Continued here

S12

5 ways that college campuses benefit from diversity, equity and inclusion programs     For more than half a century, colleges and universities have relied on dedicated programs to attract students of color and support them. Today, those programs – known as diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programs – are under attack. Students from marginalized identity groups – including Black, Indigenous, Latinx and Asian students, as well as first-generation students – perform better academically at schools with diversity programs, and graduate at a higher rate. Continued here

S13

Why 'Barbie' and 'The Little Mermaid' made 2023 the dead girl summer     Ariel and Barbie have quite a bit in common: They’re both frozen in time, and they both yearn to live as humans do.The fantastic seascapes and perfect dollhouses of “The Little Mermaid” and “Barbie” might appear whimsical. But I see these settings – and the characters who inhabit them – as figurations of death. Continued here

S14

What are strike funds? A labor-management relations expert explains     When people go on strike, their employers don’t pay them. That makes it hard for workers who have walked off the job to keep paying their bills. Union members have an advantage during strikes because they can get help with housing, food and other essential expenses through payments from strike funds.Members pay dues and fees to finance their unions. Every month, members of the United Auto Workers, for example, pay the equivalent of what they earn in two hours to their union. New members can also be required to pay a one-time initiation fee that’s much higher. The Screen Actors Guild’s initiation fee is US$3,000. Continued here

S15

What Arizona and other drought-ridden states can learn from Israel's pioneering water strategy     Arizona is one of the fastest-growing states in the U.S., with an economy that offers many opportunities for workers and businesses. But it faces a daunting challenge: a water crisis that could seriously constrain its economic growth and vitality. A recent report that projected a roughly 4% shortfall in groundwater supplies in the Phoenix area over the next 100 years prompted the state to curtail new approval of groundwater-dependent residential development in some of the region’s fast-growing suburbs. Moreover, negotiations continue over dwindling supplies from the Colorado River, which historically supplied more than a third of the state’s water. Continued here

S16

Wilko: what insolvency really means for the budget retailer and why its competitors are surviving (for now)     All 400 of Wilko’s shops are now expected to close over the next month, leaving 12,500 people without jobs across the UK. The budget retailer’s administrator PwC announced the news after it struggled to secure a rescue deal for Wilko to continue operating.After swooping in to rescue collapsed music chain HMV in 2019, Canadian businessman Doug Putman had hoped to do the same for Wilko. But his plan to rescue the company as a going concern – a business that will continue to operate and meet its financial obligations – was “hampered by the costs and difficulties thrown up by the need to overhaul Wilko’s supply chains”, according to news reports. Continued here

S17

African football fans won't be able to watch the big matches on TV - what went wrong and how to fix it     The sale of television rights is the prime source of revenue for footballing organisations worldwide, but is particularly critical to Africa. Yet the Confederation of African Football (Caf) keeps making headlines for sacking its broadcasting partners. It faces potential litigation for recently terminating a US$415 million deal with the Qatari-based beIN Sports, the second TV contract in four years that the governing body of African football has unilaterally scrapped. We asked sport communications and media expert Chuka Onwumechili to unpack why this is happening and what impact it has.TV rights are particularly critical because alternative commercial revenues such as sponsorships and merchandising are more limited in Africa. Continued here

S18

President Hassan is the face of Tanzania's reform agenda. But she needs to carry the country with her     After two years in power, President Samia Suluhu Hassan has consolidated her political base, opened up the media space and increased the number of women in public appointments. But Tanzania is not yet out of the woods. Years of failed accountability created the conditions for the rise of authoritarianism and the worrying absence of strong constitutional safeguards. The continued absence of these safeguards means that the risk of a backwards slide remains. Continued here