Search results

Recent years have witnessed a significant rise in Indian healthcare establishments (HCEs) which indicate that there is a constant need to improve the healthcare quality services through the adoption and implementation of TQM enablers. The purpose of this paper is to identify such enablers and then propose a ranking model for TQM implementation in Indian HCEs for improved performance.

The study identifies 20 TQM enablers through comprehensive literature survey and expert’s opinion, and classifies them into five main categories. The prominence of these enablers is established using a recently developed novel multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) method, i.e. best-worst method (BWM). The importance of the various main category and sub-category enablers is decided on the basis of their weights which are determined by the BWM. In comparison to other MCDM methods, such as analytical hierarchy process, BWM requires relatively lesser comparison data and also provides consistent comparisons which results in both optimal and reliable weights of the enablers considered in this paper. Further, a sensitivity analysis is also carried out to ensure that the ranking (based on the optimal weights) of the various enablers is reliable and robust.

The results of this study reveal that out of five main category enablers, the “leadership-based enablers (E1)” and the “continuous improvement based enablers (E5)” are the most and the least important enablers, respectively. Similarly, among the 20 sub-category enablers, “quality leadership and role of physicians (E14)” and “performing regular survey of customer satisfaction and quality audit (E52)” are the most and the least dominating sub-category enablers, respectively.

This study does not explore the interrelationship between the various TQM enablers and also does not evaluate performance of the various HCEs based on the weights of the enablers.

The priority of the TQM enablers determined in this paper enables decision makers to understand their influence on successful implementation of the TQM principles and policies in HCEs leading to an overall improvement in the system’s performance.

This study identifies the various TQM enablers in HCEs and categorizes them into five main categories and ranks them using the BWM. The findings of this research are quite useful for management of the HCEs to properly understand the relative importance of these enablers so that managers can formulate an effective and efficient strategy for their easy and smooth implementation which is necessary for continuous improvement.

This paper seeks to explore the applicability and implications of Bourdieu's field‐capital theory for marketing using original research with a typical European society. Bourdieu's field‐capital theory proposes that people acquire economic, social and cultural capital which they deploy in social arenas known as “fields” in order to compete for positions of distinction and status. This exploratory study aims to examine how Bourdieu's theory may explain competitive behavior in fields of interest to marketers.

A total of 61 in‐depth interviews were completed with respondents that were representative of each of 61 geodemographic “types” – clusters that enable marketers to segment an entire population.

The findings suggest that examining human behaviour through the lens of field and capital theory highlights the importance of the competition motive in explaining consumers' behaviour. New “fields” were identified which seem to have assumed primary importance, particularly in middle‐class people's lives.

Viewing consumer behaviour as social competition implies that new segmentation approaches may yield successful marketing outcomes, and opens consumer psychology and behaviour itself to new interpretations.

Very few research papers that apply field‐capital theory to marketing are present in the literature. It is hoped that this work addresses an important area, and one that is particularly prevalent in twenty‐first century consumerism.

The purpose of this paper is to determine best practices of aid agencies for outsourcing logistics to commercial logistics service providers (LSPs) in disaster relief. Moreover, it evaluates the application of the Delphi method for research in humanitarian logistics.

The paper is based on a two-round Delphi study with 31 experts from aid agencies and a complementary full-day focus group with 12 experts from aid agencies and LSPs.

The study revealed 12 best practices for outsourcing logistics in disaster relief and a compilation of more than 100 activities for putting these practices into action. Experts consider a proper balance between efficiency and compliance, a detailed contract and a detailed service request most important. Additionally, the Delphi method was found to be a promising technique for research on humanitarian logistics.

By critically examining the Delphi method, this study establishes the basis for a wider application of the technique in the field of humanitarian logistics. Furthermore, it can help to prioritize future research as the ranking of practices reflects the priorities of practitioners.

The paper provides guidance to practitioners at aid agencies in charge of outsourcing logistics.

This research is one of the first in the field of humanitarian logistics to apply the Delphi method. Moreover, it addresses the lack of literature dealing with approaches for building successful cross-sectoral partnerships.

Special attention will be given in this part to the process of decline, which is to be seen as antipodal to development, and which nowadays is all too often neglected. By “decline” we mean here the decline of a whole society. But this definition is not yet sufficient to provide us with a very clear understanding. The statement that a whole society is in decline remains void of real meaning until we possess some concrete conception of what a “whole society” and the process of “decline” are. Since the meanings of both these terms are problematical, further explanation and closer precision are called for.

Libraries need to develop information processing systems for evaluation, budgeting, planning, and operations. Electronic spreadsheets lend themselves to a variety of applications, but are time‐consuming to create. A model template and macros that can be used in many different types of library data analysis have been developed here. The procedures demonstrated here can build an essential set of tools for meeting fundamental goals of administrative efficiency, effective use of library resources, staff motivation, and rational policy making.

Financial liberalization is assumed to be the integration of a country's local financial system with international financial markets and institutions. This integration usually requires that governments liberalize the domestic financial sector and the capital account. Financial sectors were liberalized in most of the developing countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America within the early 1990s. Among these countries, emerging economies are those who promise huge potential for growth but also pose significant political, monetary, and social risks. Brazil and India are often compared among the major emerging economies. Despite these general similarities between them, there are notable differences in various aspects of opening the balance of payments capital account in both countries. In this chapter, we have tried to analyze the long-run as well as short-run relationship between quarterly growth rate of GDP with the stock market, real market, and money market macroeconomic variables in India and Brazil during the period from the first quarter of 1996–1997 to the second quarter of 2018–2019. To estimate the cointegration relationship between growth rate of GDP and its determinants, we employ the bounds testing procedure (modified-ARDL) developed by Pesaran, Shin, and Smith (2001, Journal of Applied Econometrics, 16(3), 289–326). According to our results, stock market plays a positive role in long-term growth in India. Although during the beginning period of the neoliberal reforms, India faced strong domestic political opposition, our study shows that liberalizing the financial market has been fruitful for long-term growth. Our results in case of Brazil show that inflation has a negative and significant impact on long-run growth rate of GDP. The results further show that the share of gross fixed capital formation in GDP in Brazil has a positive and significant long-run relation with the growth rate of GDP. The empirical results further indicate that just like India, liberalization of the financial market and allowing foreign capital inflows have been beneficial for the economy of Brazil in the long run.

In seminal work, Den Haan et al. (2007, 2010, 2011) show business loans respond in the opposite direction of what may be intended by monetary policy action in the United States and Canada. Based on various approaches, identification schemes, and samples, we document evidence this loan puzzle is not exclusive to developed economies but is also pervasive in emerging markets. We find business loans generally decline following expansionary monetary policy shocks. A preponderance of statistical and structural evidence indicates important transmissions of this puzzle from the United States to emerging markets.

Empirical studies on household-level inflation inequality have so far only focused on periods with positive inflation rates. However, the major concern on the policy agenda since the most recent financial crisis has been deflation rather than inflation. This naturally raises the question regarding the effect of deflation on the distribution of real income when households spend their budget on different consumption bundles. This chapter compiles annual household-level inflation rates in Denmark from 1930 to 1935 based on microdata from the Expenditure and Saving Survey of 1931 and price data from the official Retail Price Index. The results indicate that lower-income households faced a larger decline in prices on their consumption of goods and services during the deflation years 1930–1932 than higher-income households did. The deflation thus contributed to narrowing the difference in real incomes between the top and bottom parts of the income distribution during the recession. In the years 1933–1935 with positive inflation rates, the lower-income households experienced higher inflation rates than higher-income households. Over the period 1930–1935 seen as a whole, the price development contributed slightly to reducing real income inequality. The low degree of medium-term persistence of differences in household-specific inflation rates is consistent with previous findings in various time periods from the 1960s to the 2000s without any persistent deflation events. The chapter at hand is the first empirical study of the direct distributional effects of price developments at the household level in a period with persistent deflation.

The aim of this chapter is to explore whether price dynamics is homogenous across Emerging Europe. We employ dynamic panel estimation techniques (including the Pooled Mean Group estimator of Pesaran, Smith, and Shin) over the 2003–2013 period and use Germany, and respectively, the European Union (EU) as the references. Results highlight some heterogeneity across the Emerging Europe members in terms of price convergence speed. Findings are robust across different specifications.

This paper analyzes real and welfare effects of a permanent change in inflation rate, focusing on macroprudential policy’ role and its interaction with monetary policy.

While investigating disinflation costs, the authors simulate a medium-scale dynamic general equilibrium model with borrowing constraints, credit frictions and macroprudential authority.

Providing discussions on different policy scenarios in a context where still it is expected high inflation, there are three key contributions. First, when macroprudential authority actively operates to improve financial stability, losses caused by disinflation are limited. Second, a Taylor rule directly responding to financial variables might entail a trade-off between price and financial stability objectives, by increasing disinflation costs. Third, disinflation is welfare improving for savers, while costly for borrowers and banks. Indeed, while savers benefit from policies reducing price stickiness distortion, borrowers are worried about credit frictions, coming from collateral constraint.

The paper suggests threefold policy implications: the macroprudential authority should actively intervene during a disinflation process to minimize costs and financial instability deriving from it; policymakers should implement a disinflationary policy stabilizing also output; the central bank and the macroprudential regulator should pursue financial and price stability goals, separately.

This paper is the first attempt to study effects of a permanent inflation target reduction in focusing on the macroprudential policy’ role.