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The purpose of this study is to establish empirical relationships between patient flow problems, healthcare service quality and patient satisfaction with emergency department (ED) service factors from the patient perspective.

In the overall study, of which the current investigation is a part, a mixed-method research approach was to achieve the research objectives. The results reported in this paper are based on a comprehensive questionnaire survey where a well-designed and reliable questionnaire was used to survey ED patients. This study conducted partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) by using Smart PLS software.

Results show that the respondents mostly agreed with the proposed concept of quality in ED and patients were less satisfied with ED services in general and with the internal and external environments in ED in particular. It was found that relationships between nine identified scales of patient flow problems, healthcare service quality, and patient satisfaction are significant. The findings reveal that the relationship between patient flow problems and patient satisfaction is positively mediated through healthcare service quality, which shows the predictive capability of the model, indicating high predictive relevance.

This research involves a relatively small sample from a single case study. The positive relationship between patient flow problems and patient satisfaction indicate practical significance of the model for guiding to improve overall patient satisfaction.

This research, through the involvement of both hospital staff and the patient, brings out a holistic approach in terms of operational excellence in a critical unit such as the ED. The empirically established relationships form the benchmarking and guide for developing guidelines for designing policies for service improvements of ED practices.

The paper aims to review existing performance indicators in technology business incubators (TBIs) and propose some new indicators with a focus on incubation activities in higher educational institutes (HEIs) of India.

Performance indicators of various types of incubators were identified from research papers followed by interview, consultation and suggestion from experts of the subject. Nature of interrelationship between the identified indicators has been established with the help of Interpretive Structural Modelling methodology and Matrice d’impacts croisés multiplication appliquée á un classment analysis.

Number of ideas came for screening and number of ideas converted to start-ups, survival rate of incubatees is the indicators which have the highest driving power followed by time taken in screening an idea and number of failed or rejected ideas returned back into incubation. Few indicators (driving indicators) are affecting performance of other indicators as well.

Some performance indicators are proposed which can be used for measuring performance of technology incubators in India. The actual implications will be known when these findings are used to assess performance of some technology incubator. This also is the limitation of the study that some cases can be included to validate the findings of this research.

A total of 15 performance indicators for measuring performance of TBIs in Indian HEIs have been proposed. The proposed indicators will help incubator management to prioritize the efforts and resource allocation.

TBIs are looked upon as mechanism for promoting entrepreneurial culture in Indian HEIs. Their success is well linked to growth of society. This research will help technology incubators to identify the most important factors in incubation process. Performance improvement will directly affect society in whole. Culture of IEE (Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Employment ) can be achieved through technology incubators

Identification of new indicators for performance measurement of incubators in Indian HEIs is the novelty of this research. This has a lot of value due to multilevel hierarchy model.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Product & Brand Management is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Pricing; Promotion; Marketing research, customer behavior; Product management.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Sales management; Promotion; Product management; Marketing research/customer behavior; Sundry.

The responsible politician for environment in Vorarlberg spoke at the Energy Gala in November 2002 in Bregenz and said: “It is necessary not only to discuss central regulations but to invest more in decentralised actions”. The communities are central players in this field because they can act in various ways: as authority, owner of buildings and as motivator for the people.

Two examples of strategies in Austria are introduced:

e5 - program for energy efficient communities (congruent to the European Energy Award)

This program supports communities with high ambitions on energy and sustainability. The program helps to give structure, tools and a quality insurance system, so that even smaller communities can act in a professional and efficient way. Additionally it is a labelling and awarding system, which is quite important because a lot of work in the communities happens voluntarily and it is important to give approval to these actors.

Energy point system in housing subsidies

In the federal state of Salzburg the energy point system is a subsidy system for energy-saving measures and the use of renewable energy in housing.

Quality points are given, depending on the energetic and ecological quality of a building. Every point increases the subvention that is granted by the government of the federal state Salzburg. Additional points exist, for example, for the use of biomass, solar energy and controlled living space ventilation. Using this simple system, the quality of sponsored housing was increased significantly and the use of renewable energies was successfully introduced into social housing. Today more than 80% of the residential buildings in Salzburg are heated by biomass and more than 60% of the buildings are using solar energy for hot water and heating.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Marketing Intelligence & Planning is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing Strategy; Customer Service; Sales Management; Promotion; Marketing Research/Customer Behaviour; Product Management; Logistics and Distribution and Sundry.

Landmark‐based navigation of autonomous mobile robots or vehicles has been widely adopted in industry. Such a navigation strategy relies on identification and subsequent recognition of distinctive environment features or objects that are either known a priori or extracted dynamically. This process has inherent difficulties in practice due to sensor noise and environment uncertainty. This paper is to propose a navigation algorithm that simultaneously locates the robots and updates landmarks in a manufacturing environment. A key issue being addressed is how to improve the localization accuracy for mobile robots in a continuous operation, in which the Kalman filter algorithm is adopted to integrate odometry data with scanner data to achieve the required robustness and accuracy. The Kohonen neural networks have been used to recognize landmarks using scanner data in order to initialize and recalibrate the robot position by means of triangulation when necessary.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of Work Study is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Operational research and statistics; Project management, method study and work measurement; Business process re‐engineering; Design of work; Performance, productivity and motivation; Stock control and supply chain management.