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Purpose Ethnic food is a pivotal polysemic artifact, yet commonly studied based on experience. This leaves an eclipse in understanding its overall significance and implications. The purpose of this paper is to explore the interactions of experience, intimacy and embodiment from the lens of alternative tourism and Asia as a destination image. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted four focus group that include Asians who take experiential learning trips and spiritual journeys across Asia-Pacific. Findings Alternative tourists promote the growth of ethnic foodies who value impact which they determine as quality food-scape, longitudinal caring interactions with and the constant assurance of consuming food which are safe and healthy to their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Research limitations/implications Although our research does not employ any quantitative technique and devoid of inferential analysis, the rich qualitative data offer insights for further work that benefit ethnic food industry. Practical implications Industry and policy makers are encouraged to generate contextual solutions for management of the ethnic food industry. Ethnic food consumption may flourish if the industry leads its growth through a post-modernist approach. Social implications A broad perspective in growing the frontiers of ethnic food tourism beyond the landscape of an economic or consumerism-dominated approach would benefit the cross-mobility of quality talents and skills as this fosters cross-cultural literacy. Originality/value The authors develop the Ethnic Foodies Perspective-Ethnic Food Destination Image Matrix as a pathway to further motivate knowledge cross-fertilization in ethnic food tourism studies and leverage on the transdisciplinary science, innovation, socio- and sensuous geographic arena. A constellation of ethnic food innovation should link the economic side of exotic differentiation and heritage with food processing, safety and traceability.

Based on the social exchange theory, the present study aimed to investigate the association between abusive leader behavior and job insecurity while considering the serial intervention of abusive peer behavior and emotional exhaustion. Abusive leader behavior triggers abusive peer behaviors, emotional exhaustion, and job insecurity. Results from the data of 323 final responses indicated support for all the hypothesized relationships. Moreover, the findings also reported sequential mediation of abusive peer behavior and emotional exhaustion in the association between abusive leader behavior and job insecurity. The results indicate that mistreatment by an immediate boss can encourage peers to engage in similar unethical behaviors, leading to employees feeling emotionally exhausted, which ultimately results in job insecurity concerns. The study hopes that the findings will help practitioners dedicate more efforts to curtailing abusive behaviors that lead to several unintended consequences at work.

Increasing demand for energy, food, and water has resulted in resource depletion. The Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) is becoming a big challenge for the developing countries like Pakistan. Being an agrarian country, the food sector is considered an important segment for the socio-economic development. Currently, the Pakistanis behind in resource efficiency as compare to other Asian countries. Environmental Management System (EMS) acknowledged as a key element to promote organizational sustainability. Previous studies elaborated that the main environmental problems related to food manufacturing are, solid wastes, water wastes, air emissions, noise, odor, and a huge consumption of energy and water. Thus, SCP practices provide safe and sustainable human settlements, and helps in reduction of wastages. In this study, Semi-structured interviews were conducted from the owners/managers in the food and beverages processing industries of Pakistan. Purposive with snowball sampling techniques were used to investigate the existing practices of environmental management, barriers and motives towards implementation of EMS. The main problems identified were lack of awareness, weak implementation of environmental regulations, and higher cost of certification, complex documentation procedures, and unavailability of latest technologies accordingly, the study presents managerial implications to overcome the above mentioned issues.