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The principal purpose of this study is to examine the moderating influence of selling experience on the following two relationships – adaptive selling and job satisfaction and customer orientation and job satisfaction – using unionized salespeople as respondents. It also tests for the mediating role of adaptive selling in the customer orientation–job satisfaction relationship.

This paper uses data from a survey conducted on 208 pharmaceutical unionized salespeople from 46 pharmaceutical firms in India. The model was tested using structural equation modeling. Moderation hypotheses were estimated using process macro and the Johnson–Neyman technique.

The data fitted the model well. This research found that customer orientation drove adaptive selling behavior and job satisfaction, and that adaptive selling influenced job satisfaction (all positively); it was found that adaptive selling partially mediated the relationship between customer orientation and job satisfaction. Results revealed that job experience negatively moderated the adaptive selling behavior–job satisfaction and customer orientation–job satisfaction relationships.

The results show that pharma firms may hire young recruits and, importantly, measure their customer orientation and adaptive selling levels. For the purposes of training to enhance customer orientation and adaptive selling, pharma firms may send only their less experienced salespersons.

To the authors’ knowledge, this study could be the first to examine the interaction of job experience and customer-directed selling behaviors such as adaptive selling and customer orientation on job satisfaction. Moreover, this is possibly the only study in this domain that uses unionized salespeople in an emerging market (India).

The authors decided to produce their instrument because they said that organizations need guidelines to determine the levels of PWS among their employees. PWS, they said, significantly influences staff retention, competency, and organizational commitment.

There are 15 items in the instrument, which assesses four essential components of PWS. These are perceived organizational support (POS), perceived supervisor support (PSS), perceived co-worker support (PCS) and perceived sufficient resource support (PSRS). The authors collected data from a list of SME hotels and also from 82,126 enterprises in central Thailand. Admins and clerks were recruited to fill out questionnaires. A total of 374 were returned and filled in correctly.

The authors collected data from a list of SME hotels and also from 82,126 enterprises in central Thailand. Admins and clerks were recruited to fill out questionnaires. A total of 374 were returned and filled in correctly.

The positive results, the authors say, have a number of practical implications for SMEs. The relevant questions in the 15-item methodology can be used to assess each of the four components of PWS and establish good policies.

Healthcare service quality in the USA has gained importance under value-based payment models. Providing feedback to front-line staff is a vital component of managing service performance, but complex organizational dynamics can prevent effective communication. This work explored the performance management of appointment desk staff at Mayo Clinic Arizona, identified barriers to effective management and sought to standardize the process for monitoring service performance.

Multiple data sources, including qualitative inquiry with 31 employees from the primary care and surgery departments, were used. The research was conducted in two phases – facilitated roundtable discussions with supervisors and semi-structured interviews with supervisors and staff six months after implementation of service standards. Participants were probed for attitudes about the service standards and supervisor feedback after implementation.

While all staff indicated a positive work environment, there was an unexpected and pervasive negative stigma surrounding individual feedback from one’s supervisor. Half the participants indicated there had been no individual feedback regarding the service standards from the supervisor. Presenting service standards in a simple, one-page format, signed by both supervisor and the patient service representative (PSR), was well received.

Combining rapid-cycle quality improvement methodology with qualitative inquiry allowed efficient development of role-specific service standards and quick evaluation of their implementation. This unique approach for improving healthcare service quality and identifying barriers to providing individual feedback may be useful to organizations navigating a more value- and consumer-driven healthcare market.

During this period, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank emerged as the most influential donors shaping PSRs. The reforms that these donors promoted in developing countries were dedicated to freeing markets from government's regulatory grip. During this wave of reforms, the primary measure of development was the level of economic growth driven by the private sector rather than by government. Previously, the assumption had been that government was the main driver of economic growth, but now it was believed that unleashing entrepreneurs’ creative energy would induce growth.

The first part of the book traced and analyzed the record of the five decades of donor-promoted PSRs in developing countries, with specific attention to the role of the ideas and theories behind the reforms. Three waves of institutional reforms were compared according to both their content and their approach to reforms and the outcomes they generated.

This chapter describes how public sector reform (PSR) became important following the ‘Doi Moi’ (renovation) programme in 1986. Restructuring of state-owned sector was regarded as crucial for ensuring the quality of economic growth, and the Vietnamese government (www.chinhphu.vn/portal/page/portal/English) put considerable effort in PSR. The 8th Party Congress (1996) emphasized the urgent need for a more transparent, capable and modern public sector, including efforts to improve law-making process and capacity, reducing burdensome bureaucracy, fighting corruption, increasing leadership by senior officials and improving public service delivery. The government specifies the national PSR Master programme, and the Ministry of Home Affairs coordinates its implementation among ministries, central agencies and provincial governments. Local political leaders (party leaders) determine reforms based on guidelines of the party and government. The author writes that in spite of ambitious public service reform programmes and some positive achievements, the quality of public sector remains poor. The professional capacity of civil service is low, pay is low, corruption is high and processes and structures seem ill-fitted for the market economy. Reform scope is too broad, the capacity of public agencies and civil servants is limited and existing monitoring, evaluation and reporting systems are weak. In some successes, leaders use appointment and promotion to encourage lower level to implement reforms and training to increase understanding. They believe that Vietnamese leadership has become less proactive and vigorous in practicing or embracing bold reform experiments.

This paper seeks to empirically identify the major factors that influence physician loyalty behavior in prescribing certain brands of drugs.

Testable hypotheses were developed with respect to physician loyalty behavior regarding drug prescription practices, and a survey questionnaire was designed to capture the data from 71 physicians, as a convenience sample. The hypotheses were tested by PLS path modeling.

The major finding is that tangible rewards to physicians by the pharmaceutical companies lead to prescription loyalty. The second major finding is that the professional values of pharmaceutical sales representatives (PSR) impact significantly on physician prescription loyalty. The hypotheses related to the impact of PSR personality, drug quality, corporate reputation and professional influence on prescription loyalty were not supported in the study.

The results should prove useful to pharmaceutical companies in developing physician loyalty to particular brands as well as enhancing the understanding of drug control authorities and governmental health policy makers, in controlling unethical medical practices by physicians.

This paper reports an original empirical study on physician loyalty behavior in the context of drug prescription.

In pharmaceutical marketing, salespeople require promotional instruments to satisfy and retain their customers (physicians), but companies ignore the need because of the costs involved. It appears that the importance of promotional support is understood differently by managers and sales representatives. This study aims at developing a new construct called “promotional support”, as a resource support provided to salespeople to help them satisfy customer needs and achieve sales goals.

A detailed review of literature is followed by in-depth interviews to create items for the construct “promotional support”. Substantive validity is performed for identification of items measuring the construct. To initially validate the measures, a vignette study is performed. Formative index development procedure is followed. Data from a sample of 124 pharmaceutical sales representatives are collected and analyzed.

A formative construct is developed which possesses convergent (redundancy analysis) and nomological validity. The results of post hoc validation tests like confirmatory tetrad analysis and inter-item correlation are satisfactory and confirm the authors’ conceptualization.

The scale requires external validation by testing it with different samples such as managers of pharmaceutical firms.

This study will help managers of pharmaceutical firms gain insights into the role and importance of promotional inputs given to their sales representatives.

This study uses the formative scale development procedure to develop promotional support. This construct can be used to understand the effect of promotional support given to pharmaceutical sales representatives on other constructs, which in turn helps in theory-building.

The role of the Probation Service in providing an information and assessment process to the courts is currently in a state of considerable flux. This paper, in reviewing the developments in Pre‐Sentence Report (PSR) writing by the Probation Service, suggests that for a number of reasons reports have become potentially contentious.