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Hygiene theater is a new phenomenon that has emerged from the ongoing Coronavirus (Covid-19) global pandemic. The authors propose and test the concept of hygiene theater – comprised of purposeful and visible dynamic performance and static staging cues – on customers' approach-avoidance intentions in the retail environment. The authors explore the underlying process and show when environmental conditions such as human crowding dilute the positive effects of hygiene theater.

Across three experiments, participants evaluated a video or scenario related to a shopping experience in a retail store. Sequential mediation and moderated sequential mediation using PROCESS were performed.

The results show a positive and direct effect of hygiene visibility on approach responses, due to a reduction in perceived risk and increased psychological comfort. This positive effect is diluted when crowding in the retail environment is high.

As society adapts to a new normal, this study offers contributions to improve theoretical knowledge of the impact of hygiene theater on customer approach responses, helping retailers to develop and implement health and safety policies, better equipping them to manage similar situations going forward. The authors provide insights for academics and practitioners alike.

It is popularly held that some less‐skilled occupations cannot be intrinsically satisfying and meaningful to employees and that extrinsic rewards (that is, mainly monetary) assume an importance that transcends all else. This belief is certainly not substantiated by our researches of the work of hospital porters in two of the largest and most modern teaching hospitals in this country. These workers have recently been very much in the news on account of the impact their protests for better recognition have made. It is highly significant that instead of finding their work activities alienating, the reverse appears to be so and that the emphasis of their work orientation is on public service and “care”.

This chapter proposes an optimized innovative information technology as a means for achieving operational functionalities of real-time portable electronic health records, system interoperability, longitudinal health-risks research cohort and surveillance of adverse events infrastructure, and clinical, genome regions – disease and interventional prevention infrastructure. In application to the Dod-VA (Department of Defense and Veteran's Administration) health information systems, the proposed modernization can be carried out as an “add-on” expansion (estimated at $288 million in constant dollars) or as a “stand-alone” innovative information technology system (estimated at $489.7 million), and either solution will prototype an infrastructure for nation-wide health information systems interoperability, portable real-time electronic health records (EHRs), adverse events surveillance, and interventional prevention based on targeted single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) discovery.

In recent years the number of cases of listeriosis has been widely publicised. Michele Sadler PhD describes the causes of the problem and explains the reasons for this focus of attention

The purpose of this paper is to examine the challenges that arise when introducing an electronic identification (eID) card for professional use in a health-care setting.

This is a case study of an eID implementation project in healthcare. Data were collected through interviews with key actors in a project team and with eID end users. The authors viewed the eID card as a boundary object intersecting social worlds. For this analysis, the authors combined this with an electronic government initiative challenge framework.

The findings of this paper illustrate the interpretative flexibility of eID cards and how eID cards as boundary objects intersect social worlds. The main challenges of implementing and using eID cards in healthcare are usability, user behaviour and privacy. However, the way in which these challenges are interpreted varies between different social worlds.

One of the implications for future practice is to increase our understanding of the eID card as a socio-technical artefact, where the social and technical is intertwined, at the same time as the eID card affects the social as well as the technical. By using a socio-technical perspective, it is possible to minimise the potential problems related to the implementation and use of eID.

Previous research has highlighted the need for more empirical research on identity management. The authors contextualise and analyse the implementation and use of eID cards within healthcare. By viewing the eID card as a boundary object, the authors have unveiled its interpretative flexibility and how it is translated across different social worlds.

The purpose of this study is to create a knowledge base for decision-making in healthcare design by seeking, analyzing and discussing the preferences of facility managers of healthcare facilities regarding floor finishes and their selection criteria. The goal is to enable a simplified and holistic selection of floor finishes based on multiple criteria. The authors studied floor finish selection in three healthcare units: emergency, surgery and in-patient units.

The authors completed a literature review to identify types of floor finishes currently used in healthcare facilities and the criteria applied for their selection. Using the literature survey results, a questionnaire was designed and administered to healthcare facility managers. The descriptive statistical analysis and the Friedman and Wilcoxon signed-ranks tests were used for reporting and analyzing the survey data.

The top five floor finishes used in the healthcare sector were identified as vinyl flooring, vinyl composite tile (VCT), rubber, linoleum and ceramic flooring. The top five selection criteria for floor finishes were durability, infection control, ease of maintenance, maintenance cost and user safety. The non-parametric test results show that the floor finish rankings and selection criteria were similar in the three healthcare units under study.

The most significant contribution of this research is to the design decision-making process of healthcare facilities. These results offer an understanding of what floor finishes are preferred by healthcare facility managers and why. This knowledge is crucial for designers and facility managers to make informed choices and floor finish manufacturers to keep their product line relevant to the industry.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.