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In this paper, the authors examine the strategies used to reduce labour costs in three public hospitals in South Africa, which were effective and why. In the democratic era, after the revelations of large-scale corruption, the authors ask whether their case studies provide lessons for how public service institutions might re-make themselves, under circumstances of austerity.

A comparative qualitative case study approach, collecting data using a combination of interviews with managers, focus group discussions and interviews with shop stewards and staff was used.

Management in two hospitals relied on their financial power, divisions between unions and employees' loyalty. They lacked the insight to manage different actors, and their efforts to outsource services and draw on the Extended Public Works Program failed. They failed to support staff when working beyond their scope of practice, reducing employees' willingness to take on extra responsibilities. In the remaining hospital, while previous management had been removed due to protests by the unions, the new CEO provided stability and union–management relations were collaborative. Her legitimate power enabled unions and management to agree on appropriate cost cutting strategies.

Finding an appropriate balance between the new reality of reduced financial resources and the needs of staff and patients, requires competent unions and management, transparency and trust to develop legitimate power; managing in an authoritarian manner, without legitimate power, reduces organisational capacity. Ensuring a fair and orderly process to replace ineffective management is key, while South Africa grows cohorts of competent managers and builds managerial experience.

Based on the main studies presented in the literature, this work aims to examine the level of student satisfaction towards the on-campus accommodation service provided by an Italian university. Notably, the objectives of the study are twofold: (1) to examine the mediating role of student satisfaction on the relationship between university on-campus accommodation service quality and word-of-mouth and (2) to determine whether there is any significant difference in students' satisfaction towards on-campus accommodation in terms of gender and the halls of residence.

The study is based on the results of a survey carried out through an online questionnaire by 381 students living on campus at the University of Urbino.

The findings revealed that the quality perceived by university students in relation to individual services had a positive impact on their general satisfaction towards the halls of residence experience.

The study presents some limitations such as lack of temporal comparisons, a focus on specific service quality items and the fact that it refers to a single Italian university.

The findings of this study will help the management of public universities to improve the quality of services in their halls of residence for the satisfaction of their students.

To the authors' knowledge, there have been no previous studies about on-campus accommodation service quality conducted in Italy. The study contributes to enrich the service quality literature, confirming both that the sum of the quality of individual elements is not as the overall satisfaction and the outcome intention of positive WOM depends not only on service quality attributes, but also from an overall evaluation of satisfaction.

Due to e-commerce growth, technological advancements and environmental concerns, developing a more nuanced service portfolio has become a critical issue for last-mile logistics service providers. Concurrently, consumers are adopting new modes of consumption. This paper aims to investigate the potential for last-mile logistics service providers to act as intermediaries in access-based consumption and to revitalise their service offerings through product-service systems – a pioneering strategy not executed in the market yet.

This strategic customer foresight study uses a quantitative survey of 1,000 respondents and an online focus group comprising 10 early adopter consumers to investigate emerging last-mile service models. Potential service concepts were identified through the survey, and two distinct concepts were subsequently selected for evaluation and co-development within the focus group. The research was conducted in partnership with an SME logistics company in Finland.

The consumers expressed selective interest in access-based consumption related to the proposed offering of essential household goods. Young adults and consumers in early middle age living in the city centre emerged as the most potential user groups. Economic reasons and short-term needs were the primary motivations for adopting access-based consumption.

The study showed that engaging consumers in a customer foresight process is viable for SMEs innovating their offerings and demonstrates how the process works in practice.

Documented cases of customer integration into foresight processes are rare in earlier research, and this paper extends the knowledge base through a multidisciplinary examination of future consumer behaviour in the last-mile logistics domain. The paper also expands the limited literature on the role of logistics in access-based consumption.

As populations are ageing and the global average life expectancy is rising, the provision of care for older people is an increasingly salient issue. This paper aims to focus on family-provided care for older immigrants, examining how older immigrants and care providers experience and construct family caregiving.

Based on interviews with care recipients, family care providers, municipal staff and representatives for migrant organisations in Sweden, this study presents a typology of family caregiving for older immigrants.

The authors found three caregiving types, namely, solely family-provided care and a combination of family care and public care (predominantly one or the other). The decision to select family-provided or publicly-funded care depends on personal and institutional factors.

The paper makes three empirical contributions to the literature on care provision for older immigrants. Firstly, this study provides insights into the structural and personal factors that shape care-giving arrangements for older immigrants. Secondly, this study examines the perspectives of care recipients and care providers on family-provided care. Care expectations differ between both groups and sometimes result in intergenerational disagreement. Thirdly, in terms of institutional support, this study finds that the Swedish state’s notion of individual needs does not match the needs of immigrant elderly and their caregivers. The paper places the care types in a broader discussion about eldercare provision in the Swedish welfare state, which has experienced a decline in publicly funded care services and an increase in family caregiving in the past 30 years. In addition, it addresses questions of dignified ageing from a minority perspective.

The shift toward a circular economy (CE) represents a collaborative endeavor necessitating the presence of efficient frameworks, conducive contexts and a common comprehension. This research serves as a pivotal stride towards this goal, presenting an exclusive prospect for the investigation and fusion of these frameworks, with particular emphasis on the Quintuple Helix Model (5HM), into a unified theoretical framework that underscores the core principles of the CE. This study is centered on three pivotal questions aimed at decoding the CE transition in specific regional settings.

Adopting an abductive approach firmly anchored in a two-stage qualitative process, this study specifically merges the foundational principles from institutional theory, entrepreneurship literature and CE frameworks to provide insights into the dynamics of circular ecosystems, with a specific focus on the Huelva region in Spain.

The findings demonstrate significant potential in the CE, ranging from the integration of product and service systems to innovations in eco-industrial practices. Yet, a notable deficiency exists: the absence of institutional entrepreneurs, highlighting the essential role that universities can play. As recognized centers of innovation, universities are suggested to be key contributors to the transformation toward a CE, aligning with their societal and economic responsibilities.

This study highlights the importance of managing relationships with entities like SMEs and policymakers or academia for effective CE adoption. Policymakers can refine strategies based on the research’s insights, while the impact of university-driven circular ecosystems on sustainable societies is another crucial area for research.

The sustainability models cited in CE literature may not be comprehensive enough to prevent problem shifting, and it can be argued that they lack a sound theoretical and conceptual basis. Furthermore, the connections between sustainability objectives and the three levels of the CE operating system remain vague. Additionally, there is insufficient information on how regions foster the involvement of the environment in fivefold helix cooperation and how this impacts the CE.

This paper presents a model aiming to identify the factors influencing the adoption of augmented reality (AR) for industrial services.

The study combines a literature analysis with an empirical study conducted exploring how five large industrial companies are introducing AR for supporting the provision of technical assistance and industrial services to their installed base.

The authors identify four categories (task, workforce, context and technology) that combine 18 factors that manufacturing companies should consider when introducing AR technology to support industrial services.

This paper systematises the fragmented literature on technology adoption and in particular those works related to the factors affecting the adoption of AR in industrial services. Based on literature and empirical evidence, the authors propose a novel framework that can help companies in the selection of AR solution based on their specific applications and situations. This study therefore contributes also to the existing literature on the adoption of I4.0 and digital technologies in industrial services.

Solar cells could make textile-based wearable systems energy independent without the need for battery replacement or recharging; however, their laundry resistance, which is prerequisite for the product acceptance of e-textiles, has been rarely examined. This paper aims to report a systematic study of the laundry durability of solar cells embedded in textiles.

This research included small commercial monocrystalline silicon solar cells which were encapsulated with functional synthetic textile materials using an industrially relevant textile lamination process and found them to reliably endure laundry washing (ISO 6330:2012). The energy harvesting capability of eight textile laminated solar cells was measured after 10–50 cycles of laundry at 40 °C and compared with light transmittance spectroscopy and visual inspection.

Five of the eight textile solar cell samples fully maintained their efficiency over the 50 laundry cycles, whereas the other three showed a 20%–27% decrease. The cells did not cause any visual damage to the fabric. The result indicates that the textile encapsulated solar cell module provides sufficient protection for the solar cells against water, washing agents and mechanical stress to endure repetitive domestic laundry.

This study used rigid monocrystalline silicon solar cells. Flexible amorphous silicon cells were excluded because of low durability in preliminary tests. Other types of solar cells were not tested.

A review of literature reveals the tendency of researchers to avoid standardized textile washing resistance testing. This study removes the most critical obstacle of textile integrated solar energy harvesting, the washing resistance.

This paper aims to answer the questions of what clothing practices related to sustainable fashion can be observed in young consumers' daily lives in Finland’s capital region and what prevents their further proliferation.

This is qualitative research that draws from 22 semi-structured interviews with high school students in the capital area of Finland. The data were analyzed with the use of thematic analysis, a flexible method of data analysis that allows for the extraction of categories from both theoretical concepts and data.

This paper contributes to studies of young people’s consumption with the practice theory approach, putting forward the category of following sustainable fashion as an integrative practice. The three-element model of the practice theory allows answering the question of challenges that prevent the practice from shaping. The paper further advances this approach by identifying a list of context-specific dispersed practices incorporated into sustainable fashion.

The study suggests practical ways of improving clothing consumption based on the practice theory approach and findings from empirical research. Sustainable practices require competences, knowledge and skills that the school, as an institution working closely with high school students, could help develop.

The study contributes to the current studies of sustainability and youth culture of consumption with a practice theory approach and findings, related to a particular context of a country from Northern Europe.

This policy brief provides policy recommendations on the internal design of new secure children's homes (SCHs).

These policy recommendations are developed from findings from focus group discussions with academics, practitioners, frontline workers, and leaders in child protection services.

Recently emerged Packaging-as-a-Service (PaaS) systems adopt aspects of access-based services and triadic frameworks, which have typically been treated as conceptually separate. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the implications of blending the two in what we call “access-based triadic systems,” by empirically evaluating intentions to adopt PaaS systems for takeaway food among restaurants and consumers.

We derived relevant attributes of PaaS systems from a qualitative pre-study with restaurants and consumers. Next, we conducted two factorial survey experiments with restaurants (N = 176) and consumers (N = 245) in Germany to quantitatively test the effects of those system attributes on their adoption intentions.

This paper highlights that the role of access-based triadic system providers as both the owners of shared assets and the operators of a triadic system is associated with a novel set of challenges and opportunities: System providers need to attract a critical mass of business and end customers while balancing asset protection and system complexity. At the same time, asset ownership introduces opportunities for improved quality control and differentiation from competition.

Conceptually, this paper extends research on access-based services and triadic frameworks by describing an unexplored hybrid form of non-ownership consumption we call “access-based triadic systems.” Empirically, this paper addresses the need to account for the demands of two distinct target groups in triadic systems and demonstrates how factorial survey experiments can be leveraged in this field.