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To develop and propose a framework, termed here as the value package prism, for assessing the kinds of management processes and flexibility available in providing a range of value packages (services and goods offering mix).

The literature is examined and a set of highly‐visible Latin‐American examples are presented to support the development of the proposed framework.

Provides an additional perspective to the traditional set of characteristics (intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity, and perishability) for differentiating services and goods. The proposed framework (stockability, intensity of interaction, simultaneousness of consumption, and ease of performance assessment) and the value prism may be useful to operations managers in developing, planning, organizing, or controlling the production and delivery of services or goods.

Offers a new framework and an applied way to improve operations management by moving away from the extremes of pure services and pure goods to embrace how businesses compete and operate today, by delivering value packages. Provides an approach that facilitates operations managers' understanding and ability to manage substantial changes in the value packages offered to customers.

The purpose of the chapter is to develop and substantiate the principles of implementation of the innovational model of well-balanced information economy.

The methodology of the research consists of the method of analysis of causal connections, which is used for determining the need for proclaiming various principles of implementation of the innovational model of well-balanced information economy, evaluation and comparison of the possible methods of their observation, and studying possible consequences. This allows determining the optimal set of principles that allow – with the highest precision – implementing in practice the offered innovational model of well-balanced information economy.

The author offers eight main principles of implementation of the innovational model of well-balanced information economy: principle of balance, principle of simultaneousness, principle of balance of state and entrepreneurial initiative, principle of innovational activity of personnel, principle of cyclicity, principle of feedback, principle of effectiveness, and principle of protection. They focus on peculiarities and key advantages of the innovational model of well-balanced information economy and guarantee its formation as a result of practical measures that are aimed at informatization of the economic system. These principles must be a guide for action for modern economic systems, and their strict observation will allow implementation of the offered optimal model, not just formation of information economy, thus guaranteeing its balance.

The developed principles are recommended to scientific and practical application.

This article deals with how to test for and evaluate interdependence among control practices in a management control system using structural equation modeling. Empirical research on the levers of control (LOC) framework is used as an example. In LOC research, a path model approach to interdependence has been developed. The appropriateness of this approach is evaluated, developed, and compared with the correlation of residuals approach (seemingly unrelated regression) implemented in the wider complementarity literature. Empirical examples of the different models are shown and compared by using a data set on LOC of 120 SBUs in Sweden. The empirical results show that modeling interdependence among control practices in a management control system as non-recursive (bi-directional) paths or as residual correlations evidently affects the conclusions drawn about interdependence in terms of both presence and magnitude. The two models imply different views on how to conceptualize interdependence and are not statistically and empirically comparable. If using non-recursive path models, several model specification issues appear. To be able to identify such models, this needs to be carefully considered in the theory and research design prior to data collection.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse pro-anorexia from a discursive, metaphorical standpoint in order to enable an understanding of how pro-anorexia functions as political resistance through technological bodies.

Techno-metaphor is used to reveal how pro-anorexic communities online function through technology.

Six techno-metaphors work to construct pro-anorexic cyborg embodiment through technology. This pro-anorexic cyborg embodiment offers relief from the tensions of patriarchal femininity and provides control over troublesome embodiment. Technology enables women experiencing anorexia to resist the dominant interpretations of their lived experience that subjugate them.

This research offers an understanding of pro-anorexia as resistance to intolerable femininity and reconstructed female bodies through technology. By exploiting technological political space, pro-anorexics are claiming positions and forms of embodiment previously off-limits to women and their biological bodies.

The present article sets out to explore the ethical aspect of emotional competence used as both a personal and a collective resource in the occupational context of caring work. The data discussed in this article consists of interviews of and writings by Finnish social workers and nurses. By combining the concepts ‘emotional capital’ and ‘ethics of care’, this article concludes that the emotional competence of care workers manifests itself as the capability to use one's emotions in a way that enhances the ethical values of caring work and provides the employees with a sense of professional competence.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the applicability to the service business of general models used in the manufacturing environment. This is done by applying Ferdows’s model, “the strategic role of the plant”, in two cases.

This study uses the case approach. One case (IBM Nordic) is based on an interview, while the other case (Google) relies on secondary data. In each case the operations are mapped on Ferdows’s model.

The cases indicate that the same kind of roles can be found in the service business as in traditional manufacturing environments, and that these roles are widely used. However, for communicative purposes, the model was terminologically slightly modified.

Although this study presents the findings of only two cases, the knowledge of material available from public sources leads us to believe that these findings are universal. The model is easy to communicate in the service sector and is thus a very valuable tool.

Models used in the traditional manufacturing and operations management environment have not yet been fully discovered by, nor sufficiently applied in, the service sector. Academics and practitioners are busy trying to create new models in this sector, without noticing that the “old” tools are still usable. Benchmarking against the models used in other sectors might be a worthwhile exercise.

The purpose of this chapter is to study perspectives of formation of the optimization model of a well-balanced information economy in modern Russia.

The research methodology includes the complex SWOT analysis of the environment, wherein the optimization model of a well-balanced information economy in modern Russia is implemented; this analysis allows determining threats and possibilities for its formation. Also, the method of formalization is used that allows tablulation of results.

The authors show a number of prerquisites for the formation of a well-balanced information economy in Russia, as well as multiple internal barriers on the path of its development. One of the barriers is deficit of resources. Also, there exist large perspectives of formation of the optimization model of a well-balanced information economy. These perspectives include improvement of legal conditions of financing of development of digital economy, intensive development of the ICT spheres and online business, growth of innovational activity and efficiency in the information sphere, and creation and stimulation of implementing the possibilities for feedback in the course of information economy’s formation. Based on the analyzed tendencies, it is concluded that these perspectives will allow overcoming the major barriers on the path of implementation of the strategy of building the optimization model of a well-balanced information economy in modern Russia, related to deficit of resources, structural imbalance of the noosphere, low efficiency of information, and linear direction of the process of management of information economy.

The authors determine that successful practical implementation of this strategy is largely predetermined by the capability of state regulators for a highly effective management of internal and external factors. It is recommended to pay attention to the management of these factors in the process of practical implementation of the strategy of forming the optimization model of a well-balanced information economy in modern Russia.

The purpose of this chapter is to determine the basic institutes of well-balanced information economy and compile its institutional model.

The research methodology is based on the methods of the new institutional economic theory. The authors determine the most important qualitative characteristics of the innovational model of a well-balanced information economy and select social institutes that allow taking them into account and ensuring them during practical implementation of the model. The authors describe social institutes that are the basis of a well-balanced information economy and the process of their formation. The authors also use the method of modeling socio-economic phenomena and processes to compile the institutional model of a well-balanced information economy and the method of formalization of its graphic interpretation.

It is concluded that the basic institutes of the innovational model of a well-balanced information economy include the institutes of feedback collection and control and protection of information. These institutes ensure observation of the principles of implementation of this model and ensure its cyclic development and sustainability in the long-term.

The presented institutional model of a well-balanced information economy harmonizes the interaction between all the participants of socio-economic relations and processes of information economy, including its state regulation, transition of new information into the category of existing (from product into resource), internal and external exchange of information, its usage, etc.