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1 – 10 of over 239000
Article
Publication date: 5 February 2018

Miroslav Hrnciar, Peter Madzik and Matej Uram

This paper presents an approach by which potential benchmarking partners in the service sector can be matched together more efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to decide…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper presents an approach by which potential benchmarking partners in the service sector can be matched together more efficiently. The purpose of this paper is to decide which organisations are appropriate partners based on their distinctive characteristics and problems with service management.

Design/methodology/approach

In the research presented in this paper, cluster analysis and other statistical analyses were applied to data from a survey of managers in service organisations with the aim of identifying groups of services related to each other in their distinctive characteristics and the problems they face.

Findings

The research found that it is possible to identify hidden “relationships” that allow superficially different services to be grouped together. The identified relationships are based on similarities in the problems which the companies face and their distinctive characteristics. Operating in a different area of activity increases the chance that a service provider will be willing to enter into a partnership and greater potential innovation value from best practice. Cluster analysis was used to identify three groups of services in the research sample which could be benchmarking partners for each other.

Research limitations/implications

The research studied only a selective group of nine services in different areas of activity. A statistical survey of 388 organisations in one country verified the methodology in terms of statistical significance and the potential for successful identification and adoption of best practice within a group of related services created using the proposed procedure has also been confirmed. The real value of the approach can only be determined by its repeated use to establish benchmarking partnerships and the success of such partnerships, which can be defined as the adoption of innovative best practice.

Practical implications

The approach described in this paper could make it easier to develop non-competitive benchmarking in the service sector and increase the probability of success in identifying and transferring best practices between organisations in benchmarking partnerships established using it.

Originality/value

One of the first steps in collaborative benchmarking is to establish a partnership with a similar non-competing organisation. The procedure for this step is still not adequately defined. This paper contributes to the theoretical foundations and practical applications of research by setting out an original method for identifying suitable partners in non-competing sectors of the service industries. This will improve the prospects for successful partnership and greater innovativeness in best practice.

Details

Benchmarking: An International Journal, vol. 25 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1463-5771

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 March 1980

TEFKO SARACEVIC

The purpose of this paper is to survey and analyse the literature emanating from less developed countries (LDCs) and international agencies and dealing with their perception of

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to survey and analyse the literature emanating from less developed countries (LDCs) and international agencies and dealing with their perception of the needs of LDCs for scientific and technical information (STI) in relation to social and economic development.

Details

Journal of Documentation, vol. 36 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0022-0418

Article
Publication date: 1 June 2002

George K. Chacko

Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange…

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Abstract

Develops an original 12‐step management of technology protocol and applies it to 51 applications which range from Du Pont’s failure in Nylon to the Single Online Trade Exchange for Auto Parts procurement by GM, Ford, Daimler‐Chrysler and Renault‐Nissan. Provides many case studies with regards to the adoption of technology and describes seven chief technology officer characteristics. Discusses common errors when companies invest in technology and considers the probabilities of success. Provides 175 questions and answers to reinforce the concepts introduced. States that this substantial journal is aimed primarily at the present and potential chief technology officer to assist their survival and success in national and international markets.

Details

Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, vol. 14 no. 2/3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1355-5855

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 June 2021

Morteza Rahimi, Nima Jafari Navimipour, Mehdi Hosseinzadeh, Mohammad Hossein Moattar and Aso Darwesh

This paper follows a systematic literature review (SLR) method covering the published studies until March 2021. The authors have extracted the related studies from different…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper follows a systematic literature review (SLR) method covering the published studies until March 2021. The authors have extracted the related studies from different online databases utilizing quality-assessment-criteria. In order to review high-quality studies, 32 papers have been chosen through the paper selection process. The selected papers have been categorized into three main groups, decision-making methods (17 papers), meta-heuristic methods (8 papers) and fuzzy-based methods (7 papers). The existing methods in each group have been examined based on important qualitative parameters, namely, time, cost, scalability, efficiency, availability and reliability.

Design/methodology/approach

Cloud computing is known as one of the superior technologies to perform large-scale and complex computing. With the growing tendency of network service users to utilize cloud computing, web service providers are encouraged to provide services with various functional and non-functional features and supply them in a service pool. In this regard, choosing the most appropriate services to fulfill users' requirements becomes a challenging problem. Since the problem of service selection in a cloud environment is known as a nondeterministic polynomial time (NP)-hard problem, many efforts have been made in recent years. Therefore, this paper aims to study and assess the existing service selection approaches in cloud computing.

Findings

The obtained results indicate that in decision-making methods, the assignment of proper weights to the criteria has a high impact on service ranking accuracy. Also, since service selection in cloud computing is known as an NP-hard problem, utilizing meta-heuristic algorithms to solve this problem offers interesting advantages compared to other approaches in discovering better solutions with less computational effort and moving quickly toward very good solutions. On the other hand, since fuzzy-based service selection approaches offer search results visually and cover quality of service (QoS) requirements of users, this kind of method is able to facilitate enhanced user experience.

Research limitations/implications

Although the current paper aimed to provide a comprehensive study, there were some limitations. Since the authors have applied some filters to select the studies, some effective works may have been ignored. Generally, this paper has focused on journal papers and some effective works published in conferences. Moreover, the works published in non-English formats have been excluded. To discover relevant studies, the authors have chosen Google Scholar as a popular electronic database. Although Google Scholar can offer the most valid approaches, some suitable papers may not be observed during the process of article selection.

Practical implications

The outcome of the current paper will be useful and valuable for scholars, and it can be a roadmap to help future researchers enrich and improve their innovations. By assessing the recent efforts in service selection in cloud computing and offering an up-to-date comparison of the discussed works, this paper can be a solid foundation for understanding the different aspects of service selection.

Originality/value

Although service selection approaches have essential impacts on cloud computing, there is still a lack of a detailed and comprehensive study about reviewing and assessing existing mechanisms in this field. Therefore, the current paper adopts a systematic method to cover this gap. The obtained results in this paper can help the researchers interested in the field of service selection. Generally, the authors have aimed to specify existing challenges, characterize the efficient efforts and suggest some directions for upcoming studies.

Details

Kybernetes, vol. 51 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0368-492X

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2015

Seema Joshi

It has been observed in various studies that the “servicization” of the structures of production and employment has taken place in India. However, a problem peculiar to this…

253

Abstract

Purpose

It has been observed in various studies that the “servicization” of the structures of production and employment has taken place in India. However, a problem peculiar to this sector or several types of services is that the output of some components of this sector is difficult to measure as well as to value it in monetary terms. The purpose of this paper is to identify the problems encountered in the measurement of service sector output.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper makes use of secondary sources of data including various reports, books and journals, etc. An attempt has been made in this paper to review those studies which deal with measurement problems in services sector output.

Findings

In the Indian context, it has been found that the data base on the service sector is highly disorganized. It has been recognized in studies that the limitation of the existing system is marred by the absence of a well-organized mechanism for maintaining a regular and proper database for this sector. A large number of the unorganized units are located in the service sector and the composition of units in the domain undergoes changes at a rapid pace because new units or newer service areas come into existence and others disappear with alarming frequency. Therefore, the need for “devising a proper classification of services” by identifying all new services and adopting a suitable methodology so as to maintain international comparability of data has been highlighted in various studies.

Originality/value

Although there are studies which try to point out measurability problems of services in developed European economies, however, studies related to service sector statistics problems in India are far less in number. This paper will therefore mainly focus on the service sector statistics problems in India and point out the way forward.

Details

World Journal of Science, Technology and Sustainable Development, vol. 12 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2042-5945

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 28 December 2020

Iman Bahrami, Roya M. Ahari and Milad Asadpour

In emergency services, maximizing population coverage with the lowest cost at the peak of the demand is important. In addition, due to the nature of services in emergency centers…

Abstract

Purpose

In emergency services, maximizing population coverage with the lowest cost at the peak of the demand is important. In addition, due to the nature of services in emergency centers, including hospitals, the number of servers and beds is actually considered as the capacity of the system. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to propose a multi-objective maximal covering facility location model for emergency service centers within an M (t)/M/m/m queuing system considering different levels of service and periodic demand rate.

Design/methodology/approach

The process of serving patients is modeled according to queuing theory and mathematical programming. To cope with multi-objectiveness of the proposed model, an augmented ε-constraint method has been used within GAMS software. Since the computational time ascends exponentially as the problem size increases, the GAMS software is not able to solve large-scale problems. Thus, a NSGA-II algorithm has been proposed to solve this category of problems and results have been compared with GAMS through random generated sample problems. In addition, the applicability of the proposed model in real situations has been examined within a case study in Iran.

Findings

Results obtained from the random generated sample problems illustrated while both the GAMS software and NSGA-II almost share the same quality of solution, the CPU execution time of the proposed NSGA-II algorithm is lower than GAMS significantly. Furthermore, the results of solving the model for case study approve that the model is able to determine the location of the required facilities and allocate demand areas to them appropriately.

Originality/value

In the most of previous works on emergency services, maximal coverage with the minimum cost were the main objectives. Hereby, it seems that minimizing the number of waiting patients for receiving services have been neglected. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first time that a maximal covering problem is formulated within an M (t)/M/m/m queuing system. This novel formulation will lead to more satisfaction for injured people by minimizing the average number of injured people who are waiting in the queue for receiving services.

Details

Journal of Modelling in Management, vol. 16 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1746-5664

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 June 1985

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains…

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Abstract

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 23 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 1 November 2001

Charlene Pleger Bebko

Looks at unmet customer expectations in service delivery associated with service encounter problems. Problematic service encounters are compared to those which were problem free…

4128

Abstract

Looks at unmet customer expectations in service delivery associated with service encounter problems. Problematic service encounters are compared to those which were problem free. Four services were evaluated by customers – legal consultation, hair stylist, film processing and retail store. These services covered a range of both process and outcome tangibility. Expectations, perceptions and the “gaps” between them were used to evaluate service quality across a range of service encounters. If problems were reported, customers were asked to evaluate three attribution factors: who was at fault for the problem, could it have been prevented and could it occur in future service encounters. These findings indicate that when there is a service encounter problem, and that service has some level of intangibility, unmet customer expectations are significantly greater than in services with some level of tangibility. Suggests how service providers might prevent customer perceptions of service quality from significantly diverging from customer expectations in these situations.

Details

Journal of Services Marketing, vol. 15 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0887-6045

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 20 April 2022

Iain McPhee, Barry Sheridan, Andrew Horne, Steph Keenan and Fiona Houston

This study aims to provide data on substance use amongst young people in Scotland to inform policy and practice for an age group who generally do not access specialist alcohol and…

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to provide data on substance use amongst young people in Scotland to inform policy and practice for an age group who generally do not access specialist alcohol and drug services. The main objectives of the study were to assess the problem severity scores of items from a modified version of the DAST-10 brief screening instrument among respondents; examine correlations between a range of variables in relation to DAST-10 problem severity scores; and explore respondent knowledge of how and where to seek help.

Design/methodology/approach

A fixed quantitative design methodology recruited a non-probability sample of 4,501 respondents from an online survey made available by “We are With you” Scotland.

The survey was ethically approved by the School of Education and Social Sciences, University of the West of Scotland. It consisted of 32 questions exploring substances used within the past 12 months, and 12 weeks, and included the DAST-10. We further explored help seeking, and knowledge of support available to respondents.

Findings

Substance use patterns were markedly different from people currently known to specialist alcohol and drug services. Over half of respondents were under 25, and 62% report being employed. The most commonly used substances were cannabis and cocaine. One third of respondents recorded substantial or severe problem severity scores and reside in Scottish Local Authorities with high concentrations of socio-economic inequality.

Secure accommodation, stable relationships and being employed are protective factors in relation to reported negative health consequences associated with problem substance use.

Just under one third (27%) of respondents report knowing where to seek help for substance use problems; however, they are unwilling to attend existing specialist alcohol and drug services.

Research limitations/implications

A non-probability sample of the Scottish population has a potential for response bias due to how and what way the survey was made available to respondents. It is acknowledged that while useful as a method of generating drug use data, there are limitations in how recently the substance use occurred, and in relation to the types of substances reported (cannabis, cocaine and ecstasy).

Practical implications

The study provides data to inform wider public health measures in relation to accessing support and addressing societal discrimination associated with the use of substances. The study provides data on service design for young people who do not access specialist alcohol and drug services.

Social implications

The study informs substance use policy in the Scottish context in relation to a population of young people who use licit and illicit substances. Data contributes to evidence supporting correlations between problematic substance use and socio-economic inequality. Data indicates that existing specialist services require redesign.

Originality/value

The study is the first to be conducted within a Scottish context.

Details

Drugs, Habits and Social Policy, vol. 23 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2752-6739

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 17 July 2020

Arya Sohrabi, Mir Saman Pishvaee, Ashkan Hafezalkotob and Shahrooz Bamdad

Prepaid mobile Internet is one of the most profitable services that are composed of multiple attributes. The overall utility of Internet service can be broken down into the sum of

Abstract

Purpose

Prepaid mobile Internet is one of the most profitable services that are composed of multiple attributes. The overall utility of Internet service can be broken down into the sum of the utility of individual attribute levels. Based on the multi-attribute theory, rational consumers choose the service that yields the highest utility from a number of possible alternatives. Determining the optimal attribute levels that satisfy consumers' preferences and maximize the total revenue of the firm is a challenging multi-attribute decision problem for any mobile operator. When designing mobile Internet services, adopting a robust composition of services against different realizations of competitors' strategies can bring advantages for network operators. The purpose of this study is to determine the optimal attribute levels of prepaid mobile Internet packages with the aim of maximizing the total revenue of the firm by considering the paradigms of multi-attribute utility theory about consumer choices and the issue of uncertainty in counterpart services offered by the competitors.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper formulates the problem of multi-attribute pricing and design of mobile Internet plans in a competitive environment by developing deterministic and robust scenario-based mathematical models and considering the paradigms of multi-attribute utility theory about consumer choices. The proposed robust scenario-based models are based on three different paradigms, including maximizing expected revenue, minimizing the negative deviation from expected revenue and minimizing the maximum regret. A comprehensive numerical analysis is conducted to evaluate and compare the efficiency of the proposed models.

Findings

The evaluations reveal that deploying recourse policy can result in higher revenue for the firm when facing uncertainty. By doing sensitivity analysis, this paper shows that consumer preferences for brand attribute and consumers' purchase frequency can influence the revenue of network operators.

Originality/value

This paper develops a novel deterministic multi-attribute product line design (PLD) model to address the problem of determining the price and composition of prepaid mobile Internet plans. Furthermore, the issue of uncertainty in counterpart services offered by the competitors is studied for the first time in the PLD literature.

Details

Journal of Enterprise Information Management, vol. 33 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1741-0398

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 239000