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This paper aims to identify the dimensions of service quality in the case of ride-sourcing services in Indian context.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify the dimensions of service quality in the case of ride-sourcing services in Indian context.
Design/methodology/approach
The service quality dimensions of ride-sourcing services are identified using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA). Further, the reliability and validity of the factors are established through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) using AMOS.
Findings
The service quality dimensions of ride-sourcing services are identified: comfort, internal environment, safety and personnel, mobile convenience and reliability, mobile system efficiency and availability, mobile customer service and billing and mobile security and privacy.
Research limitations/implications
The various dimensions are identified to measure service quality of ride-sourcing services in India. So, these dimensions can be tested for ride-sourcing services of countries having similar culture as India.
Practical implications
The proposed dimensions can be used as a diagnostic tool to identify and compare important criteria for service quality of ride-sourcing services.
Originality/value
Most relevant studies about dimensions of service quality for ride-sourcing services do not have stable factor structure. The dimensions identified include the traditional taxi service quality and mobile app service quality, which are not covered in current literature.
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Williams Ezinwa Nwagwu and Henry Abolade Areo
The purpose of this study was to examine how cost, network and technology factors affect the use of mobile technologies for clients’ care in internal medicine department in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study was to examine how cost, network and technology factors affect the use of mobile technologies for clients’ care in internal medicine department in Nigeria’s premier teaching hospital, the University College Hospital, Ibadan.
Design/methodology/approach
The study adopted a survey design covering a cross-section of medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses and medical laboratory technologists in the Department of Internal Medicine. A questionnaire guided data collection.
Findings
There is a high level of consciousness and use of mobile technologies for meeting healthcare needs of internal medicine clients in the University College Hospital, Ibadan and medical practitioners are deploying the technology most. However, there is no similar evidence of consciousness and use of wearable health-care technologies and solutions. The hospital makes some provision for mobile technology support for relevant medical staff and purposes. However, about three in 10 of the respondents reported that they use their own funds to recharge hospital-provided mobile phones means.
Research limitations/implications
The study focusses only on one institution but the result reflects the situation in other hospitals, University College Hospital, Ibadan, Nigeria being the major supplier of health and medical human resources in the country.
Practical implications
The hospital requires undertaking institutional assessment of mobile service need and consumption for clients’ care and thereafter make adequate provision to match the need. Furthermore, the institution could work out various forms of collaboration with mobile technology operators in the country to subsidise the cost of the use of telephones for clients’ care as part of their corporate social responsibility.
Social implications
The institution could work out collaboration with mobile technology operators in the country to subsidise cost of mobile client care as part of the philanthropic and corporate social responsibility of telecom companies.
Originality/value
This study focusses mainly on internal medicine and has implication for a more proper understanding of adult deployment of mobile phones for client care.
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C.J. Fitch and C. Adams
This paper addresses some key management issues relating to developing mobile support for community healthcare (CHC) provision, such as support structures, service management and…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper addresses some key management issues relating to developing mobile support for community healthcare (CHC) provision, such as support structures, service management and organization.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents three generic examples that draw out the heterogeneous nature of CHC support and the issues and challenges involved. The research is mostly qualitative, based on interviews with key health and social care professionals in the south of England, supported by desk‐based activity. The initial phase of the pilot involved six healthcare professionals, who were interviewed for approximately an hour and a half each using a semi‐structured questionnaire.
Findings
It is clear that many CHC professionals, for the generic case examples, cannot do their community activity without some mobile technology support, such as a mobile telephone. More sophisticated support offers much potential to improve patient/client care in the community as well as efficiency benefits.
Research limitations/implications
The investigation is ongoing with the next stage involving other regions and a wider set of interviews and focus groups.
Practical implications
Practical considerations, such as availability and appropriateness of equipment, security, confidentiality and accountability issues access procedures and usage protocols need to be addressed before the full benefits can be achieved.
Originality/value
Identification of ten main issues and challenges facing mobile service provision and management.
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Sunday Adewale Olaleye, Ismaila Temitayo Sanusi, Richard Osei Agjei and Frank Adusei-Mensah
Drivers, travellers/tourists, pedestrians, paramedical officers, road safety officers, police officers and other security agencies in emergency times in developing countries are…
Abstract
Purpose
Drivers, travellers/tourists, pedestrians, paramedical officers, road safety officers, police officers and other security agencies in emergency times in developing countries are often challenged. The purpose of this paper is to explore the intervention of a quick mobile contact called “My Contact Person” (MCP) during such emergencies.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a quantitative research method to collect data. The research tool is a researcher-made questionnaire with items developed using the five innovation dimensions and domestication. The data was analyzed with SmartPLS 3.0 software. The reliability values were above the postulated demarcation of 0.7, while the average variance extracted conforms to the norm of 0.5. The study participants were mobile phone users who own and use a mobile phone. Owing to the study’s nature, a simple random sampling technique was used to appraise 196 respondents across Nigeria’s demography.
Findings
The results show that the mobile users in a developing context are willing to observe “MCP’s” efficacy before they try to appropriate it to their daily lifestyle. Further, “MCP’s” compatibility with the telephone user is an antecedent of its relative advantages over the existing telephone lists. The results reveal that the respondents perceived integrating and adapting “MCP” to their daily lives as a complicated process. In this study, most participants did not regard observability and trialability as a means of appropriating MCP to their daily lifestyle.
Research limitations/implications
This paper’s findings’ generalizability is limited because the present study was conducted using two higher education institutions (HEI) with a relatively small sample in Nigeria. Probing MCP domestication in more institutions and other communities, as significant communities’ aside HEI use mobile phones will increase our research findings’ generalizability. A parallel investigation of a range of developed and developing countries should be explored to ascertain mobile phone users’ perceptions across context.
Practical implications
This study has several implications for citizens, especially in the developing world. MCP will provide quick contact opportunities to loved ones of the traumatized, saving lives by significantly avoiding worry, fear, anxiety and depression. MCP also has the potential of increasing input needs to be undertaken to accelerate the appropriate use of digital technology by health-care consumers, including enhancing education and technological literacy and providing access to low-cost digital technology.
Originality/value
“MCP” will be a quick intervention for drivers, travellers/tourists, pedestrians, paramedical officers, road safety officers, police officers and other security agencies in the time of emergency. For the managers, the relative advantage is the preferable factor to create awareness for “MCP”, while observability needs more effort to persuade the mobile phone users to accept and use MCP.
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The purpose of this chapter is to provoke thinking about the directions in which the travel survey toolkit should move in the near future based on the author's personal experience…
Abstract
The purpose of this chapter is to provoke thinking about the directions in which the travel survey toolkit should move in the near future based on the author's personal experience and as an outcome of the Travel Survey Methods conference. The chapter begins with a brief historical review that attempts to show some of the major elements of change that have occurred in travel survey methods over the past 40–50 years. A more detailed review is provided about developments over the past 10–15 years. The chapter then explores a number of emerging challenges, including telephone contact of potential respondents, computer-assisted surveys, Internet surveys, mixed-mode surveys, the impacts of language and literacy and the potentials of mobile technologies. Based on this, the chapter then considers future directions that should be pursued. The chapter suggests that it has been changes in survey methodology that have, in the past, sometimes enabled and at other times led to changes in modelling paradigms, and that this may be an appropriate time for travel survey methodology again to enable changes in modelling paradigms. A speculative specification of a new household travel survey that makes use of a number of these developments is then offered. The chapter ends with some concluding remarks that issue a challenge to the travel survey community to think ‘outside the box’ and foster change and improvement in the accuracy and representativeness of travel surveys.
Masoud Mohammed Albiman and Zunaidah Sulong
This paper aims to examine the long run impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on economic growth in the Sub Saharan African (SSA) region. The direct impact of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the long run impact of information and communication technology (ICT) on economic growth in the Sub Saharan African (SSA) region. The direct impact of ICTs use was examined for a 27-year period (1990-2014), before the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) era (1990-1999) and during the MDGs era (2000-2014). Second and third objectives examined the nonlinear effect of ICT in the economic growth and their threshold values, respectively. The main growth enhancing transmission channels of ICT use were also looked at.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses panel method technique of system generalist method of moment. The data period was collected from the years 1990-2014 from 45 SSA countries. The three main proxies of ICT are fixed telephone lines, mobile phone users and internet users per 100 inhabitants.
Findings
For the direct impact analysis, mobile phone and internet were found to have triggered economic growth. However, for nonlinear effect analysis, mass penetration of ICT proxies seems to slow economic growth. The threshold analysis showed a penetration rate threshold of 4.5 per cent for both mobile phone and internet, and 5 per cent for fixed telephone line before economic growth gets triggered. Finally, the results indicated that, except for financial development, human capital, institutional quality and domestic investment were the main growth enhancing transmission channels of ICTs use in the economy.
Practical implications
From a policy perspective, results suggest SSA region to open more doors for investment in technology to ensure sustainable development. Such policy has to focus on investment into main transmission channels of ICT, namely, human capital, institutional quality and domestic investment. The policymakers have to ensure that penetration of mobile phone, fixed telephone and internet is met by improvement in human capital, institutional quality and domestic investment. Moreover, to fully use the potential of ICT, improving the financial sector is highly recommended.
Originality/value
In SSA, studies that address the impact of ICT on economic growth was almost non-existent, especially on its nonlinear effect and main transmission channels. While few studies have examined the direct impact of ICT, this study extended the scope by including the main growth enhancing transmission channels and nonlinear effect of ICT on SSA economies using recent data.
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Elisabeth Berg, Christina Mörtberg and Maria Jansson
This article aims to focus attention on users of information technology (IT), especially mobile telephony. It focuses on what people actually say about mobile technology but also…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to focus attention on users of information technology (IT), especially mobile telephony. It focuses on what people actually say about mobile technology but also aims to pay attention to what they do not talk about, what is found in the silence, especially with new technology when much can be taken for granted. This latter is, according to Foucault, even more important to understand.
Design/methodology/approach
The research draws on empirical research through 11 semi‐structured interviews and interviews with five focus groups, comprising between four and eight care assistants in each group. The interviews were with three women and three men between 25‐70 years old, five female public sector middle managers and care assistants from five focus groups at social services departments in the north of Sweden. A Foucauldian approach is adopted to interpret the findings and explore how their locations within the circuits of socio‐technical networks engender uncertainty with mobile technology. The present spread of IT reinforces a belief that people are integrated into the circuits of socio‐technical networks.
Findings
The findings suggest, on the one hand, that new technologies like mobile communication can be used to organise our everyday lives, whilst, on the other, there are risks with the new technologies, which can discipline discourses.
Originality/value
These issues are discussed from a sociological and informatics perspective.
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