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The authors determine how the scheduling and sequencing of surgeries by surgeons impacts the rate of post-surgical complications and patient length-of-stay in the hospital.

Leveraging a dataset of 29,169 surgeries performed by 111 surgeons from a large hospital network in Ontario, Canada, the authors perform a matched case-control regression analysis. The empirical findings are contextualized by interviews with surgeons from the authors’ dataset.

Surgical complications and longer hospital stays are more likely to occur in technically complex surgeries that follow a similarly complex surgery. The increased complication risk and length-of-hospital-stay is not mitigated by scheduling greater slack time between surgeries nor is it isolated to a few problematic surgery types, surgeons, surgical team configurations or temporal factors such as the timing of surgery within an operating day.

There are four major limitations: (1) the inability to access data that reveals the cognition behind the behavior of the task performer and then directly links this behavior to quality outcomes; (2) the authors’ definition of task complexity may be too simplistic; (3) the authors’ analysis is predicated on the fact that surgeons in the study are independent contractors with hospital privileges and are responsible for scheduling the patients they operate on rather than outsourcing this responsibility to a scheduler (i.e. either a software system or an administrative professional); (4) although the empirical strategy attempts to control for confounding factors and selection bias in the estimate of the treatment effects, the authors cannot rule out that an unobserved confounder may be driving the results.

The study demonstrates that the scheduling and sequencing of patients can affect service quality outcomes (i.e. post-surgical complications) and investigates the effect that two operational levers have on performance. In particular, the authors find that introducing additional slack time between surgeries does not reduce the odds of back-to-back complications. This result runs counter to the traditional operations management perspective, which suggests scheduling more slack time between tasks may prevent or mitigate issues as they arise. However, the authors do find evidence suggesting that the risk of back-to-back complications may be reduced when surgical pairings are less complex and when the method involved in performing consecutive surgeries varies. Thus, interspersing procedures of different complexity levels may help to prevent poor quality outcomes.

The authors empirically connect choices made in scheduling work that varies in task complexity and to patient-centric health outcomes. The results have implications for achieving high-quality outcomes in settings where professionals deliver a variety of technically complex services.

The authors examine how performance measurement systems (PMSs) and academic agency influence the meaning of research quality in practice. The worries are that the notion of research quality is becoming too simplistically and narrowly determined by research quality's measurable proxies and that academics, especially manager-academics, do not sufficiently realise this risk. Whilst prior literature has covered the effects of performance measurement in the university sector broadly and how PMSs are mobilised locally, there is only little understanding of whether and how PMSs affect the meaning of research quality in practice.

The study is designed as a comparative case study of two university faculties in Finland. The role of conceptual analysis plays a notable role in the study, too.

The authors find that manager-academics of the two examined faculties have rather similar conceptual understandings of research quality. However, there were differences in the degree of slippage between the “espoused-meaning” of research quality and “meaning-in-practice” of research quality. The authors traced these differences to how the local PMS and manager-academics’ agency relate to one another within the context of increasing global and national performance pressures. The authors developed a tentative framework for the various “styles of agency”. This suggests how the relationship between the local PMS and manager-academics’ exerted agency shapes the “degrees of freedom” of the meaning of research quality in practice.

Given that research quality lies at the heart of academic work, the authors' paper indicates that exploring the three matters – performance measurement, the agency of manager-academics and the meaning of research quality in practice – in combination is crucial for the sustainability of the academe. The authors contribute to the literature by detailing the way in which local PMS and manager-academics' agency have material impacts on what research quality means in practice. The authors conclude by highlighting the pressing need for manager-academics to exercise the agency in efforts to safeguard a broad and pluralistic understanding of research quality in practice.

Psychotherapy is often used to treat dysfunctional inter-personal relationships, but it is rarely used to treat dysfunctional B2B relationships. Yet many of the variables found in inter-personal relationships are also found in B2B relationships and both types of relationships have similar fail rates. The authors take a multi-disciplinary approach by adapting an instrument from marriage therapy into a new measure called the Business Relationship Health Index (BRHI). In the process we re-evaluate the drivers of B2B relationships.

The authors apply the Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF) psychiatric system to B2B relationships. The GARF instrument incorporates three components: interaction/problem solving, organization/structure and emotional climate. Using US panel data of 500 B2B relationships based in the USA, the authors use partial least squares analysis and develop a structural equation model to test the validity and reliability of the BRHI with some well-known relationship measures including, satisfaction, trust, commitment and performance.

The findings support a strong link between the BRHI (emotion, interaction and organization) and relationship performance. The proposed measure shows a strong link between BRHI and relationship performance (R² = 0.54).

The GARF instrument has never been applied to a B2B context. BRHI is a holistic instrument used for assessing the specific relational characteristics of B2B relationships. The BRHI can benefit relationship stakeholders when used as a diagnostic tool to prioritize B2B investment strategies. Managers can use BRHI to determine the extent to which the relationship is healthy or needs repair, re-evaluation, re-commitment, or repositioning.

A small group of pioneering founders led the creation and early evolution of the service research field. Decades later, this article shares timeless service wisdom from ten of those pioneering founders.

Bowen and Fisk specified three criteria by which to identify a pioneering founder. In total, 11 founders met the criteria (Bateson, Berry, Bitner, Brown, Chase, Edvardsson, Grönroos, Gummesson, Parasuraman, Schneider and Zeithaml) and were invited to join Bowen and Fisk – founders that also met the criteria as coauthors. Ten founders then answered a set of questions regarding their careers as service scholars and the state of the field.

Insightful reflections were provided by each of the ten pioneering founders. In addition, based on their synthesis of the reflections, Bowen and Fisk developed nine wisdom themes for service researchers to consider and to possibly act upon.

The service research field is in its fifth decade. This article offers a unique way to learn directly from the pioneering founders about the still-relevant history of the field, the founders' lives and contributions as service scholars and the founders' hopes and concerns for the service research field.

Disruptive forces, such as the global pandemic and technological innovation, are leading to growing labor uncertainty. For organizations, being able to adapt is a key skill for employees, while adapting to different employment contexts is increasingly essential for career success. This study leverages career adaptability theory and integrated dynamic capabilities to isolate skills enabling career adaptation.

A qualitative study was conducted to develop a skills codebook using a Delphi technique to converge on career adaptation skills, which was validated against leading meta-skills frameworks and a purposeful sample of 15 occupational competency models.

The codebook phase identified 24 distinct meta-skills in 6 clusters: problem-solving, self-reliance, collaboration, communication, core literacies and core workplace skills. Findings confirmed that most of the skills identified by the experts were also present across the meta-skills frameworks.

This study highlights research opportunities, including a recommendation to extend the codebook by conducting a large sample empirical study of occupational competency models.

Adaptive individuals remain attractive in the job market. With the proposed framework, individuals can systematically reflect on ways to develop career adaptation skills. Other stakeholders should support the development of skills that facilitate an individual's capacity to adapt to diverse employment contexts.

This study contributes to resolving the debate on skills contributing to career adaptation by combining the career adaptability theory and integrated dynamic capabilities, to produce a harmonized meta-skills codebook including labels, definitions and synonyms. This study validates the codebook against leading skills frameworks and occupational competency models.

A fear appeal is a communication tactic designed to scare people into adopting desired behaviors (e.g. wash hands to avoid contracting COVID-19). While it is generally acknowledged that fear appeals can be persuasive at motivating behavior, this paper aims to identify how to optimally identify how to optimally frame the focal threat to increase their effectiveness as well as to uncover additional underlying processes.

The authors conducted four experimental studies.

This research validates that exposure to fear appeals can strongly motivate behavior. However, this study shows that this effect is moderated by threat specificity. Specifically, this study demonstrates that people are more motivated to engage in behaviors that facilitate threat avoidance after exposure to a personally relevant threat that represents a nonspecific (e.g. aging appearance) rather than a specific outcome (e.g. wrinkles). This effect is mediated by perceptions of assimilation (versus contrast) to the focal threat. This study reliably shows the effect across three threat domains (i.e. aging appearance, weight gain, illness) and for different behaviors.

Theoretically speaking, this study contributes to the fear appeal literature by identifying a new type of message framing that has the potential to increase fear appeal’s persuasive power, and uncovering a distinct mechanism by which fear appeals impact behavior. Practically speaking, the findings confirm that fear appeals have the potential to help marketers mobilize consumer behavior, especially when the communication highlights a nonspecific rather than specific threat.

Patient length of stay (LOS) is an important indicator of emergency department (ED) performance. Investigating factors that influence LOS could thus improve healthcare delivery and patient safety. Previous studies have focused on patient-level factors to explain LOS variation, with little research into service-related factors. This study examined the association between LOS and multi-level factors including patient-, service- and organization-level factors.

This study uses a retrospective observational design to identify a cohort of patients from arrival to discharge from ED. A year-long data regarding patients flow trhoguh ED were analyzed using analytics techniques and multi-regression models. The response variable was patient LOS, and the independent variables were patient characteristics, service-related factors and organizational variables.

The findings of this study showed that older patients, middle triage and hospitalization were all associated with longer LOS. Service-related factors such as complexity of care provided, initial ward designation and ward transfer had a significant impact as well. Finally, prolonged LOS was associated with a higher ratio of patients per medical doctor and per nurse. In contrast, a higher number of residents in the ED were associated with longer patient LOS.

Previous studies on patient LOS have focused on patient-level factors, with little research on service-related factors. This study has addressed that gap by examining the association between LOS and multi-level factors including patient-, service- and organization-level factors. Patient-level factors included demographics, acuity, arrival shift, arrival mode and discharge type. Service-level factors consisted of first ward, ward transfer and complexity of care provided. Organizational factors consisted of three ratios: patients per MD, patients per nurse and patients per resident. The results add to the current understanding of factors that increase patient LOS in EDs and contribute to the body of knowledge on ED performance, operation management and quality of care. The study also provides practical and managerial insights that could be used to improve patient flow in EDs and reduce LOS.

This article aims to open the black box of the relationship between customer experience and customer satisfaction. The authors also take a fine-grained approach to the concept of customer experience analysis in terms of four dimensions: basic service experience (BSE), moments of truth (MT), focus on results (FR) and peace of mind (PM).

A total sample of 185 industrial customers in Spain was collected via an online platform from March to April 2020. The data were analysed using partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results indicated that the four dimensions of customer experience are the foundation of commercial success (i.e. customer satisfaction) for express parcel companies in the business-to-business (B2B) environment. Therefore, the most innovative express parcel companies should not only pay attention to providing services in accordance with the customer agreement but also go beyond that; hence, these companies must understand customer needs to be able to offer a unique experience. Therefore, these companies must design experiences that go beyond pure technical delivery services.

Although previous work has linked customer experience to customer satisfaction, there is little work that does so specifically in an industry as in vogue as express parcels and less so in the B2B environment. In addition, this work analyses fine-grained customer experience in terms of grain's four dimensions, and therefore, the authors analyse how each dimension (e.g. more rational or more subjective dimensions) impacts customer satisfaction. Few studies have focussed on this type of analysis for express parcel companies in the B2B environment.

A comprehensive literature review of performance management within the Dutch steel processing industry is presented. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the motives for companies to become excellent performers in their field of expertise. These internal and external motives (refined by quantitative analysis of bibliographic data) sought to reveal the common factors that impact company performance.

Inductive reasoning was adopted using an interpretivist philosophical stance to generate new theoretical insight. A mixed-methods analysis of pertinent extant literature afforded greater synthesis of the research problem domain and generated more valid and reliable findings. The software visualisation of similarities viewer was used to conduct a qualitative bibliographic analysis of extant literature to yield greater clarification on the phenomena under investigation.

Four thematic groups of past research endeavours emerged from the analysis and were assigned appropriate nomenclature, namely: industry internal motives; industry external motives; excellent performer and incremental working method. To further expand upon the continuous improvement process (CIP – embodied within performance management), the paper describes the virtuous cycle of improvement, which consists of the consecutive steps of “planning”, “doing”, “checking” and ultimately of “acting” accordingly to the previous steps. It can be concluded that a high-performing company acts according to its mission, plans in line with the vision do as defined in the strategy and checks by reflection.

This unique study provides invaluable insight into the performance management of Dutch steel processing companies. Although the research context was narrowly defined, the findings presented are equally applicable to clients, contractors and sub-contractors active in other sectors of the construction industry. The research concludes by prescribing factors of mitigation strategies to support chief executive officers to focus on the optimum distribution of their scarce resources.

This study aims to develop a new integrated decision-making framework specifically designed to address complexity and uncertainty for project portfolio management. It particularly focuses on managing portfolios in a post-merger context. The paper portrays a normative and prescriptive approach to effectively creating a well-balanced project portfolio in a post-merger scenario.

This study introduces hyper-project portfolio frame as a prospective methodology for evaluating post-merger portfolios. The proposed method especially addresses the challenges associated with integration following a merger.

Hyper-project portfolio frame provides fundamental leaps in post-merger project portfolios. The frame gives opportunities to check consistency with policy, organizational scalability, flexibility and product diversity. It also underpins achieving the strategic objectives of mergers and acquisitions (M&As).

The literature synthesis is approached from an interpretative standpoint. The research incorporates discussions and comparative studies from the relevant literature and introduces a novel approach. Additionally, new descriptive studies can expand the proposed process-oriented decision-making. Moreover, this research does not consider hostile takeovers.

Nested in content and process-oriented fashion, the frame provides suitable prequalification analysis for portfolios in a post-merger under the concepts of complexity, uncertainty, risk and value.