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This paper first presents a research framework for e‐service evaluation within four categories: cost, benefit, functions and development, each incorporating a number of factors. Through data analysis and hypotheses testing, inter‐relationships among the factors of the four categories are examined. The results show that the development type of an e‐service has a significant effect on the degree of user satisfaction. Expertise, technique and expense are the principle factors limiting current e‐service adoption. The most significant finding is that, in the development of e‐services, certain cost factors are significantly more important than others in relation to certain benefit factors. The finding is presented as a cost‐benefit factor‐relation model. This provides an insight into whether investment in certain areas of e‐service applications is more important than in others for particular business objectives. These results have the potential to improve the strategic planning of companies by determining more effective investment areas and adopting more suitable development activities where e‐services are concerned.

In emergency services, maximizing population coverage with the lowest cost at the peak of the demand is important. In addition, due to the nature of services in emergency centers, including hospitals, the number of servers and beds is actually considered as the capacity of the system. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a multi-objective maximal covering facility location model for emergency service centers within an M _(t)/M/m/m queuing system considering different levels of service and periodic demand rate.

The process of serving patients is modeled according to queuing theory and mathematical programming. To cope with multi-objectiveness of the proposed model, an augmented ε-constraint method has been used within GAMS software. Since the computational time ascends exponentially as the problem size increases, the GAMS software is not able to solve large-scale problems. Thus, a NSGA-II algorithm has been proposed to solve this category of problems and results have been compared with GAMS through random generated sample problems. In addition, the applicability of the proposed model in real situations has been examined within a case study in Iran.

Results obtained from the random generated sample problems illustrated while both the GAMS software and NSGA-II almost share the same quality of solution, the CPU execution time of the proposed NSGA-II algorithm is lower than GAMS significantly. Furthermore, the results of solving the model for case study approve that the model is able to determine the location of the required facilities and allocate demand areas to them appropriately.

In the most of previous works on emergency services, maximal coverage with the minimum cost were the main objectives. Hereby, it seems that minimizing the number of waiting patients for receiving services have been neglected. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that a maximal covering problem is formulated within an M _(t)/M/m/m queuing system. This novel formulation will lead to more satisfaction for injured people by minimizing the average number of injured people who are waiting in the queue for receiving services.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

The Healthy at Home (H@H) is an older adult day program that is in Toronto in Ontario, Canada. This is an integrated health and social care (IHSC) program that seeks to address the social isolation and health needs of a highly vulnerable older adult population living in the north Toronto communities. These are Russian-speaking Jewish older adult immigrants. The case provides a detailed description of the factors that enabled a diverse group of health and social care organizations to integrate their respective services to address the health and social care needs of their clients using a culturally appropriate and trauma-informed lens.

A case description comprised of key informant interviews, and a focus group was undertaken of representatives from health and social care organizations serving clients in the north Toronto area.

This case description identified eleven integration factors that enabled organizations to provide integrated care using a culturally appropriate and trauma-informed lens, and they include developing an aligned vision and goals, communications, an inter-organization culture of inter-dependence, champions, pre-existing relationships, and champions. In addition, operating in the not-for-profit sector, sector differences, enabling public policies and a strong sense of community have influenced integration of services across the organizational partners to serve its high-risk client group.

This case description lends insights into how IHSC can be leveraged to provide culturally appropriate and trauma-informed care for highly vulnerable client/patient populations. A lesson learnt is that social care partners can engage in successful integration leadership in joint health and social care integration efforts.

Discusses attempts by the government’s political opposition (in the UK) to break the consensus on welfare and considers whether the recent change in political power has materially altered the direction of policy relating to care in the community and the role of social workers. Charts the development of the British welfare state from its conception in 1945 through to the present day, focussing on recent reforms in community care provisions and the role of social workers; details how the profession has been undermined by a series of events and profiles the former government’s response. Identifies that the welfare role of social workers has diminished, and been replaced with a social control function. Concludes that, despite the legacy inherited from the previous government, a shift in the political approach to social services and community care provision is discernible.

The aim of this paper is to study the factors affecting the customer’s “Intention to Adopt TFS” (I-TFS), and a conceptual model has been proposed, while most previous studies have focused on the study of self-service technology (SST). Interactions between customer and service provider during delivery of a service is termed as “service-encounter”. The technology that enables service delivery without customer having a face-to-face service-encounter is known as “self-service technology” (SST). Froehle and Roth described five different ways in which technology can be used in service-encounter. One of the ways, known as technology-facilitated service (TFS), requires the simultaneous existence of three entities – customer, technology and service provider – during a service-encounter. Unlike SST, in TFS customer, technology and service provider must co-exist for the completion of the service.

The factors affecting I-TFS can be divided in two categories: human – technology interaction (H-TI) and human–human interaction (H-HI). Although, existing literature has dealt with factors related to H-T I, e.g. “ease-of-use” and “perceived-usefulness”, the author tries to draw attention to H-H I variables, e.g. “facilitating-conditions”, which are potentially significant but have remained fairly untouched. For the study, participants were drawn from a target market where a TFS was operational. A scientifically developed survey was used to collect data from 222 participants. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyze the conceptual model.

The results strongly suggest that while H-T I factors are important, H-H I factors are equally critical during service delivery. H-H I factors become especially more relevant than H-T I in developing countries.

The study strongly suggests that attitude towards the human element, i.e. service provider/front-line employee is an important factor that impacts the customer’s I-TFS. In the context of emerging economies where organisations provide innovative technology services to suit the needs of the respective populations human representatives are a must to support the service. We conducted this research within one TFS context. Additional studies with more diverse TFS with other consumer groups should be conducted to provide additional support and increase the generalisation of both the research framework and findings.

The findings of the study are useful to all those firms that are considering the implementation of other TFS such as tele-medicine or distance education programmes. By investigating the main causal variables that have an impact of adoption of TFS, we provide an actionable set of factors to help firms understand and influence TFS adoption behaviour.

Research on factors affecting adoption of services has traditionally focused either on interpersonal interactions between customers and service providers (H-HI) or non-interpersonal interactions of customer with technology (H-TI). However, very few have studied dimensions of H-HI and H-TI together to understand their impact on customer’s adoption of a service. Considering the need for more research, this study examines the relationships between H-HI, H-TI and their simultaneous impact on consumer adoption of services.

The present study aims to synthesize and conceptualize, through a systematic literature review (SLR), the current state of gamification knowledge in the tourism and hospitality (T&H) sector, providing a roadmap for future research recommendations for service research and practice.

The research is based on a systematic literature review and adopts a systematic quantitative approach to summarize existing evidence on gamification usage in the T&H sector, focusing on relevant service literature on gamification. The authors analyze 36 papers published between 2011 and 2019.

The authors synthesize existing knowledge into five themes describing gamification's role in T&H (Edutainment, Sustainable behavior, Engagement factors, Service provider-generated content and User-generated reviews). Then, a cross-analysis of the five themes reveals the pivotal elements (affordances, behavioral and psychological outcomes, and benefits) generated by gamification mechanics in T&H, simultaneously highlighting potential implications and relevant insights for service literature. The review identifies critical issues affecting gamification research and provides a future research agenda, considering opportunities for T&H and service research.

The study provides the first SLR investigating gamification in T&H. The findings present potential implications and relevant insights for T&H contributing to the construction of a more holistic understanding of gamification adoption in service research.

Nowadays, cloud platforms are used in many fields, including e-commerce, web applications, data storage, healthcare, gaming, mobile social networks, etc. However, security and privacy are still two significant concerns in this area. The target of this paper is to present a system for trust management in industrial cloud computing using the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) approach. MCDM techniques have been developed to accommodate a wide range of applications. As a result, hundreds of approaches have been generated with even minor variations on current approaches spawning new study fields.

Cloud computing provides a fully scalable, accessible and flexible computing platform for various applications. Due to the multiple applications that cloud computing has found in numerous life features, users and providers have considered providing security in cloud communications. Due to its distributive nature, dynamic space and lack of transparency in performing cloud computing, it faces many challenges in providing security. For security improvement, trust management can play a very influential role. This paper proposes a generic analytical methodology that uses a series of assessment criteria to evaluate current trust management testing prototypes in industrial cloud computing and related fields. The authors utilize a MCDM approach in the present article. Due to the multi-dimensionality of the sustainability objective and the complexities of socio-economic and biophysical processes, MCDM approaches have become progressively common in decision-making for sustainable energy.

The results of comparing and evaluating the performance of this model show its ability to manage trust and the ability to adapt to changes in the behavior of service providers quickly. Using a simulation, all results are confirmed. The results of simulations and evaluation of the present paper indicate that the proposed model provides a more accurate evaluation of the credibility of cloud service providers than other models.

The number of cloud services and customers is vast and extremely competitive in cloud environments, where novel cloud services and customers can join at any time, while others can withdraw whenever they want. Because of cloud services' highly dynamic and dispersed design, trust management mechanisms must be highly flexible to obtain feedback and update trust outcomes as quickly as possible. The model presented in this article tries to improve users' trust in the cloud industry.

Using a method (MCDM) to find the best trust management solution based on user experience in industrial cloud computing is the novelty of this paper.

It is very complicated to keep the business processes under control since the business processes change rapidly and thus flexibility is an important attribute which businesses should possess in order to respond to rapid changes in the business environment. The purpose of this paper is to divide the companies' customers into different priority groups to be served according to their payment history and feedback in order to increase the companies' performance and profit and save the time of customers within high priority class which may lead to increase their satisfaction.

The paper proposes a requirements engineering‐based approach for business process modelling to assist businesses maintain their performance in such an environment. The paper proposes a new numerical model to improve customer satisfaction in relation to delivery or service waiting time according to their priority class, particularly customers in the high priority class. A call centre at the selected telecommunication company is used as a case study to validate the proposed numerical model.

The customers' satisfaction in the area of the time to be served according to their priority group classes can be improved using the proposed model.

The paper has some limitations as the paper only tested the numerical model on one real business organisation and one business process service.

To date, no research has been conducted in the area of separating customers into different priority groups to provide services according to their required delivery time, payment history and feedback which will increase the company's performance and profit and provide prompt service to customers in the high priority class which in turn, will increase their satisfaction.

This study aims to critically review the research on the phenomenon of discrimination in hospitality and tourism services to identify the key thematic areas, scenarios, antecedents and consequences; to provide theoretical propositions for future research; and to propose practical strategies to reduce discrimination and to improve equality in the field.

This paper adopts the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines to collect relevant academic work on discrimination in hospitality and tourism services from 1985 to 2020 and critically reviews and analyses the studies through bibliometric analysis, content analysis and critical analysis.

The findings show that the main sources of discrimination in hospitality and tourism services include sexism, racism, ethnocentrism, lookism and ego-altruism. Discrimination-related research has temporal and geographical variations. A research map is proposed to present existing knowledge of discrimination in hospitality and tourism services, which indicates that while the impacts (at the individual, organizational and institutional levels) of discrimination in hospitality and tourism services have been thoroughly researched, the nature and characteristics of the phenomenon remain context-based and poorly conceptualized.

An anti-discrimination guideline for hospitality and tourism practitioners is designed to cope with and eliminate discriminatory situations. This evidence-based guideline provides useful coping strategies based on the prevent–monitor–manage principle.

This paper is comprehensive in its scope, methodology and wide coverage of discrimination-related research in hospitality and tourism services. It is the first attempt to review this phenomenon in the existing literature and identifies the research gaps and future research agendas.