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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the antecedents, importance, and consequences of the customer orientation of service employees (COSE) in highly relational services (HRS). This study challenges the traditional vision of COSE and its sole focus on transactional services. The paper also examines and confirms new outcomes of COSE. Then, a revised COSE model adapted to HRS is proposed.

The private banking (PB) service is chosen to represent a HRS setting. The qualitative study is comprised of 25 semi-structured interviews with PB practitioners. The results are analysed using NVivo 11.

This study confirms the validity of the construct. COSE is proven to have notable importance in HRS. Various dimensions of COSE have different grades of importance. New consequences are elicited for HRS, including trust, loyalty and co-creation.

The results show that most PB firms do not have standardised processes in place to measure COSE. This study proves how COSE can be used for several purposes by practitioners as a means of customer relationship management and in co-creation strategies.

This study expands on the potential of the COSE construct by the use of HRS for the first time and introduces new consequences from the original COSE model.

With the performance of service personnel often constituting a major element of a service per se, the customer orientation of service personnel is often regarded as a main determinant of service firms' success. Drawing on a deductively derived four‐dimensional conceptualization of the customer orientation of service personnel, consisting of employees' technical skills, social skills, motivation, and decision‐making power, a model of the impact employees' customer orientation has on key service marketing constructs is theoretically developed. The model is then empirically tested against a sample of 989 consumers for two service contexts (i.e. book/CD/DVD retailers and travel agencies), with the results providing support for most hypotheses. Implications of the findings for services and retail management are discussed.

This paper aims to compare three virtual learning environments (VLEs) (WebCT, Blackboard and creation of study environments) with respect to how well they have incorporated elements of digital libraries.

The comparative evaluation technique has been used to compare the three selected VLEs along five key dimensions of digital libraries: content/format support, metadata, search/browse features, customizability and preservation.

Within the three selected VLEs, content reusability, search/browse functionality, along with customizability and personalizability appear to be the best addressed digital library elements.

This paper gives a sense of how well some current VLEs are implementing elements of digital libraries, as well as what areas are lacking. The results could have been further enhanced by examining additional VLEs.

This study provides a window into what options currently exist with respect to the integration of digital libraries and VLEs, as well as where these packages should go in the future. It provides recommendations related to seamless access, metadata implementation, controlled vocabulary and preservation.

This paper is of value to librarians, digital library developers, instructors and VLE designers – giving them feedback on how these environments should be structured to enhance information access. It is the first comparative evaluation of these three VLEs with respect to the implementation of digital library elements.

This paper develops a customer‐oriented service model for the public sector. Although customer‐oriented service models have become popular since 1980, most studies have been restricted to the private sector. In addition, they have emphasised the management of service operations rather than system design. This paper proposes a customer‐oriented service‐enhancement system (COSES) for the public sector. The model employs two dimensions: design and management of a customer‐oriented service system; and the fostering of organizational service culture. In this COSES model, the best practices of public agencies are empirically examined with respect to: the types of customer‐oriented service activities that can be developed; and how they can be developed.

This paper aims to clarify the meaning of children’s participation in the relationship between children’s individual action and the social treatment and consequences of this action. For this purpose, the paper explores the integration of different theoretical approaches that can shape research on children’s participation, looking at interactions, complex social systems that include interactions, and narratives that are produced in these complex social systems. This integration allows the understanding of the ways in which children actively participate in communication processes, social structures condition children’s active participation, and children’s active participation can enhance structural change in social systems, through the implementation of promotional communication systems. The paper highlights the following paradox: the relevance of children’s action for social change depends on the relevance of adults’ action in promoting children’s actions. This theoretical perspective is exemplified in the case of promotion of children’s active participation in the education system through the empirical analysis of cases of videotaped and transcribed interactions, highlighting facilitation systems of classroom communication. The analyzed data are based on a field research in Italian classrooms regarding a specific methodology of facilitation of communication. The analysis of these data shows the ways in which the facilitation system creates the paradoxical relationship between structures that condition children’s active participation and children’s active participation that enhances structural change. The paper highlights a new way of dealing with children’s participation, based on a social constructionist, systemic, and interactionist approach.

Current research aims to investigate whether it would be possible to identify all information security policy (ISP) writing styles and how these would influence ISP compliance. Almost all businesses use ISPs to establish boundaries and require secure behaviour from their employees. Unfortunately, professional surveys and academic research demonstrate a high level of non-compliance with the ISP. While the justification for the employee’s behaviour has been discussed, very few research papers have investigated whether the ISP writing style impacted the intent to comply with ISP. The research methodology incorporates content analysis and a quantitative descriptive review of published papers on ISP and non-IS policy compliance. The theoretical research allowed the identification of five major ISP writing styles: belonging, deterrence, goal, motivation, and specialist, as well as writing style influencers such as timeliness and readability. To achieve a higher level of compliance with the ISP, it was suggested that the writing styles of belonging, goal, and motivation be used primarily. Deterrence is generally discouraged. The study enabled us to determine when ISP writing styles were mentioned and the type of influence on the intent to comply with ISP. It also allowed for comparison and possible differences in ISPs versus standard workplace policies. There are proposals on which writing styles to put forward, along with recommendations on creating an ISP.

Cyber management of organizations includes eliminating security gaps, ensuring information confidentiality, and protecting customers' data. In addition, production and planning, protecting cyber and digital infrastructure are included in the chapter. The chapter deals with these issues in the context of strategy and management. In addition, the conflicts arising from competitors to access the tacit knowledge (confidential information, commercial secrets, commercial relations, customers, and tenders) of the businesses are discussed in the chapter. Cyber conflicts have now turned into a business-to-business war. Businesses have become targets in cyberwars. This chapter, therefore, examines these issues in depth.

Background: Hyperglycemia in pregnancy (HIP) is a common medical complication during pregnancy and is associated with several short and long-term maternal-fetal consequences. We aimed to determine the prevalence and factors associated with HIP among Ugandan women.

Methods: We consecutively enrolled eligible pregnant women attending antenatal care at Kawempe National Referral Hospital, Kampala, Uganda in September 2020. Mothers known to be living with diabetes mellitus or haemoglobinopathies and those with anemia (hemoglobin <11g/dl) were excluded. Random blood sugar (RBS) and glycated hemoglobin A1c (HbA_1c) were measured on peripheral venous blood samples. HIP was defined as an HbA1c ≥5.7% with its subsets of diabetes in pregnancy (DIP) and prediabetes defined as HbA1c_1c of ≥6.5% and 5.7–6.4% respectively. ROC curve analysis was performed to determine the optimum cutoff of RBS to screen for HIP.

Results: A total of 224 mothers with a mean (±SD) age 26±5 years were enrolled, most of whom were in the 2^nd or 3^rd trimester (94.6%, n=212) with a mean gestation age of 26.6±7.3 weeks. Prevalence of HIP was 11.2% (n=25) (95% CI: 7.7–16.0). Among the mothers with HIP, 2.2% (n=5) had DIP and 8.9% (n=20) prediabetes. Patients with HIP were older (28 years vs. 26 years, p=0.027), had previous tuberculosis (TB) contact (24% vs. 6.5%, p=0.003) and had a bigger hip circumference (107.8 (±10.4) vs. 103.3 (±9.7) cm, p=0.032). However only previous TB contact was predictive of HIP (odds ratio: 4.4, 95% CI: 1.2–14.0; p=0.022). Using HbA_1c as a reference variable, we derived an optimum RBS cutoff of 4.75 mmol/L as predictive of HIP with a sensitivity and specificity of 90.7% and 56.4% (area under the curve=0.75 (95% CI: 0.70–0.80, p<0.001)), respectively.

Conclusions: HIP is common among young Ugandan women, the majority of whom are without identifiable risk factors.