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1 – 10 of over 25000Sineenart Krichanchai and Bart L. MacCarthy
The purpose of this paper is to investigate vendor managed inventory (VMI) for the supply of medicines between distributors and hospitals to identify factors that may affect VMI…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate vendor managed inventory (VMI) for the supply of medicines between distributors and hospitals to identify factors that may affect VMI adoption.
Design/methodology/approach
Two contrasting VMI initiatives involving five organizations (three hospitals, one distributor and one manufacturer/supplier) are studied. A case study method with semi-structured interviews is used with triangulation in data collection, site visits and document analysis to enhance reliability and validity. The cases are analyzed and compared with respect to hospital, supplier, product and supply chain integration characteristics.
Findings
A successful public sector VMI initiative and an unsuccessful private sector VMI initiative are identified. The public sector supplier focuses on improving service level while the private sector supplier seeks to strengthen relationships with a key customer. Hospital characteristics, including type of hospital, top management perspectives and the hospital’s willingness to share information, are critical in decisions on VMI initiation or termination. Relatively stable demand products are preferred for a VMI approach. Hospitals may perceive risks in VMI adoption for medicines as it involves relinquishing control of critical supplies and may result in “lock-in” with a particular supplier.
Research limitations/implications
The cases have been conducted in one country, which may affect generalization of the findings. Wider empirical evidence from other countries in both developed and less developed regions will be beneficial.
Practical implications
VMI is advocated as being beneficial in many supply contexts. However, it is challenging to implement. The study identifies factors that affect the adoption of VMI for hospital pharmaceuticals and provides guidance on initiating VMI in a hospital context.
Social implications
The potential for VMI in public health projects to enable greater access to critical medicines is highlighted.
Originality/value
The paper provides supply side and demand side perspectives on VMI adoption in an important sector. It highlights the need for greater understanding of the perceived and actual risks in VMI from the perspective of both the hospital and the supplier and for much clearer advice on which pharmaceutical products are appropriate for VMI control in a hospital context.
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Barbara Tip, Frederik Guido Sebastiaan Vos, Esmee Peters and Vincent Delke
Procurement professionals widely use purchasing portfolio models to tailor purchasing strategies to different product groups’ needs. However, the application of these approaches…
Abstract
Purpose
Procurement professionals widely use purchasing portfolio models to tailor purchasing strategies to different product groups’ needs. However, the application of these approaches in hospitals and the impact of a pandemic shock remain largely unknown. This paper aims to assess hospital purchasers’ procurement strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic, the effects of factor-market rivalry (FMR) on strategies and the effectiveness of purchasing portfolio categorizations in this situation.
Design/methodology/approach
This qualitative study of hospital purchasing in the Netherlands is supported by secondary data from official government publications. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 hospital purchasers at large hospitals. An interpretative approach is used to analyze the interviews and present the results.
Findings
The findings reveal that product scarcity forces purchasers to treat them as (temporary) bottleneck items at the hospital level. The strategies adopted largely aligned with expected behavior based on Kraljic’s commodity management model. Adding the FMR perspective to the model helped to further cluster crisis strategies into meaningful categories. Besides inventory management, increasing supply, reducing demand and increasing resource coordination were the other common strategies. An important finding is that purchasers and governments serve as gatekeepers in channeling FMR, thereby reducing potential harmful competition between and within hospitals.
Social implications
The devastating experience of the COVID-19 pandemic is unveiling critical weaknesses of public health-care provision in times of crisis. This study assesses the strategies hospital purchasers apply to counteract shortages in the supply chain. The findings of this study emphasize the importance of gatekeepers in times of crisis and present strategies purchasers can take to assure the supply of resources.
Originality/value
No research has been conducted on purchasing portfolio models and FMR implications for hospitals during pandemics. Therefore, the authors offer several insights: increasing the supply risk creates temporary bottleneck strategies, letting purchasers adopt a short-term perspective and emphasizing the high mobility of commodities in the Kraljic commodity matrix. Additionally, despite more collaboration uncovered in other studies regarding COVID-19, strong rivalry arose at the beginning of the pandemic, leading to increased competition and less collaboration. Given such increased FMR, procurement managers and governments become important gatekeepers to balance resource allocation during pandemics both within and between hospitals.
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Luluk Lusiantoro and Nicola Yates
Maintaining a safe and available supply of blood requires a mindfully coordinated supply chain (SC) and is fundamental to the effective operation of health systems across the…
Abstract
Purpose
Maintaining a safe and available supply of blood requires a mindfully coordinated supply chain (SC) and is fundamental to the effective operation of health systems across the world. This study investigates how blood supply chain (BSC) actors demonstrate collective mindfulness (CM) principles in their operations and how these demonstrations lead to improvements in blood safety and availability (BSA) in different operational contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
Six case studies drawn from two contrasting BSCs, the UK and Indonesia, which differ in structure and regulation are investigated in this research. Qualitative data are collected and analysed using template analysis.
Findings
The cases reveal how the CM principles are demonstrated in the supply chain context in a range of operational conditions and their impact on BSA. The BSC actors in the more centralised and tightly regulated cases display more behaviours consistent with more of the CM principles over a greater range of operational conditions compared to those in the more decentralised and loosely regulated cases. As such, more improvements in BSA are found in the former compared to the latter cases.
Originality/value
This paper is considered the first to investigate the demonstration of CM principles at the SC as opposed to the single organisational level. It proposes an alternative approach to understanding and evaluating reliability performance using behavioural rather than statistical principles.
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Kerry Swinehart, Thomas W. Zimmerer and Sharon Oswald
Industrial organizations have employed the process of strategicmanagement in their attempts to cope effectively with global competitivepressures, while attempting to build and…
Abstract
Industrial organizations have employed the process of strategic management in their attempts to cope effectively with global competitive pressures, while attempting to build and maintain competitive advantage. With health‐care organizations presently trying to cope with an increasingly turbulent environment created by the uncertainty as to pending legislation and anticipated reform, the need for such organizational strategic planning is apparent. Presents and discusses a methodology for adapting a business‐oriented model of strategic planning to health care.
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This article expands literature on user innovation by exploring the mechanisms that support user innovations in the context of a public organisation. Research has hitherto…
Abstract
Purpose
This article expands literature on user innovation by exploring the mechanisms that support user innovations in the context of a public organisation. Research has hitherto documented support mechanisms for user innovation in producer companies, where users contribute in early or temporary innovation phases as external non-employees or lead-users engaged by the producer. Complementarily, this paper explores a lesser known area of support mechanisms, those that support internal user innovations in a public sector setting.
Design/methodology/approach
Employing a qualitative study of a Norwegian public hospital at the interface between users (personnel and patients) and organisational support (facilitators who orchestrate user innovations), this article analyses in-house user innovation based on observations, text documentation and interviews over a four-year period.
Findings
In this public hospital, holistic organisational facilitation of “public user innovators” formed the key support mechanism built on “people” (facilitating co-creation), “process” (facilitating ideas, project realisation and implementation) and “coordination” (facilitating systems and communication). The findings show that public and producer organisational mechanisms both resemble and differ in many respects, as illustrated by the framework developed to describe these characteristics, such as that producers insource users, while the public organisation outsources production.
Originality/value
The originality of the article lies in the identification and description of “public user innovation”, a new term developed from this study of a public organisation in contrast to the dominant literature on producer companies. This article contributes new insights by differentiating the roles of user innovators and the mechanisms that support such innovations. New implications are drawn from the public side of organisational support in user innovation research.
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Karin Braunsberger, R. Brian Buckler and Michael Luckett
The purpose of the paper is to compare measures of subjective and objective knowledge as well as usage/experience measures in a credence service environment for two different…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of the paper is to compare measures of subjective and objective knowledge as well as usage/experience measures in a credence service environment for two different samples, namely college students and non‐student adults.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from two independent samples using self‐administered questionnaires and were analyzed using correlation and reliability analyses, factor analysis, discriminant analysis and one‐way ANOVA.
Findings
For the student sample, the results show that even though measures of subjective product knowledge, objective product knowledge, and product usage are correlated with one another, each represents one unique dimension of total product knowledge. The results for the non‐student sample show that subjective and objective knowledge converge into one dimension, product usage is a second dimension, and vicarious product knowledge a third dimension.
Research limitations/implications
One limitation of the present study is that its results are anchored in the context of hospitals and might thus be most relevant to this particular choice of service. In terms of implications, the “vicarious” component of total product knowledge the study uncovers for non‐students is a promising field for future studies because it is identified as one of the dimensions of total knowledge for those non‐student consumers who have a fairly low degree of objective knowledge and direct product experience.
Practical implications
Marketing managers should to take into account that, for adults, subjective knowledge is a better indicator of their objective knowledge than for students (or perhaps similar segments).
Originality/value
The present study is one of the first studies to investigate simultaneously the three dimensions of consumer product knowledge in a credence service environment.
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Stephen Oduro, Kwamena Minta Nyarku and Rotimi A. Gbadeyan
Integrating the social exchange and resource dependency theories, the study aims to comparatively examine the supplier relationship management (SRM) dimensions and organizational…
Abstract
Purpose
Integrating the social exchange and resource dependency theories, the study aims to comparatively examine the supplier relationship management (SRM) dimensions and organizational performance links of private and public hospitals in Ghana.
Design/methodology/approach
Comparative in nature; employing a quantitative approach; and using simple random and convenience sampling techniques, the study tested the proposed hypotheses using structural equation model-partial least square based on 205 usable questionnaires. Partial least square-multigroup analysis (PLS-MGA) was performed to test the significance of the difference in the parameters between the two samples: private and public hospitals in Ghana.
Findings
The dimensions of SRM (communication, cooperation, trust, atmosphere and adaptation) have a significant, positive impact on private hospitals’ performance in Ghana. Similarly, communication and trust were found to be positively and significantly correlated to public hospitals’ performance. In contrast, cooperation, atmosphere and adaptation dimensions showed no significant, positive effect on public hospitals’ performance. PLS-MGA disclosed that these observed differences in the findings between the private and public hospitals in Ghana are statistically significant.
Research limitations/implications
The findings of the study, while limited to hospitals in Ghana, are likely to be relevant in other emerging economies for effective and enhanced supply chain relationship management.
Practical implications
The findings provide pragmatic insights for marketing practitioners and organizational leaders of hospitals about the significance of SRM dimensions in today’s globalized marketplace, and how to nurture them to enhance organizational performance.
Originality/value
The value of the study lies in the examination of the relationship between SRM and organizational performance in the health sector by comparing private and public hospitals in an emerging economy context.
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As an American participant in ‘Management and Financing of Hospital Services’, the DRG Convention held in London on llth‐13th December, 1986, I had looked forward to the…
Abstract
As an American participant in ‘Management and Financing of Hospital Services’, the DRG Convention held in London on llth‐13th December, 1986, I had looked forward to the presentations with a great deal of happy anticipation. That may seem a strange attitude unless one recognises that the life of a ‘DRG expert’ in the USA today is not necessarily a happy one. Like it or not, we are viewed as policemen. Much of the continuous, carping and often self‐serving criticism levelled against us can be described as woeful pleas from a band of corsairs; not very bloodthirsty ones mind you, but rapacious nonetheless.
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the occupational identity of management accountants working in the public sector is influenced by a change in management accounting…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how the occupational identity of management accountants working in the public sector is influenced by a change in management accounting and control systems as well as the underlying management agenda.
Design/methodology/approach
From interviews with management accountants and their associates in five public hospitals, the paper illustrates how a change in new public management (NPM)‐related managerial agendas interacts with how the management accountants perceive their professional roles.
Findings
It is argued that the focus of the NPM agenda in Finnish public health care has shifted from a “down grid agenda”, emphasising private sector accounting and control methods, to a “down group agenda” that emphasises accountability, visibility and comparability. This change in agendas has materialised in the implementation of the diagnosis‐related groups (DRG) system, and the resultant abandoning of activity‐based costing (ABC) systems. Health care management accountants who rely on private sector ideals for constructing their occupational identity may resist the implementation of DRG if they interpret it as a shift in managerial discourse.
Originality/value
The paper links two different and sometimes contradictory agendas within the NPM framework with the occupational identity of management accountants. The observed reaction to the shifting agendas has implications for understanding why some accounting systems carry more appeal than others.
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A conference entitled ‘The Management and Financing of Hospital Services’ was held in London in December 1986. It was concerned with the implementation of a uniform patient…
Abstract
A conference entitled ‘The Management and Financing of Hospital Services’ was held in London in December 1986. It was concerned with the implementation of a uniform patient classification system (DRG) for management and financing for certain cases in 15 European countries.