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Chief executive officers (CEOs) at America’s top 100 commercial banks, savings institutions and credit unions were surveyed to determine the importance of cost containment and customer retention practices. The study explores differences that exist among the three types of financial institutions. The results of the survey indicate that commercial bank CEOs rate themselves higher than others in almost all areas of cost containment and customer service. Commercial bank and credit union CEOs gave highest priority to customer retention items. Principles for improving service quality and customer retention are discussed in detail.

The purpose of this paper is to create a resilient supply chain (SC) plan to contain disruptions and risks in the overall operations of a business.

The study integrates resilience considerations in a business planning model that formulates resilience performance (RP) of SC functions in terms of flexibility, reliability, and similar system factors. It evaluates the RP of SC plans and determines their vulnerability considering required and planned resources. The model estimates the possible effects of disasters on vulnerable functions using a scenario-based analysis and plans containment options. It also includes decision options for deploying resources to achieve the expected levels of resilience by preventing potential vulnerabilities. The model takes optimum decision in a what-if approach by comparing performance of the existing business plan, with options for containing the vulnerabilities inherent in not considering potential risks when planning to fulfill market demand, and the performance of a resilient plan that includes decision options to prevent vulnerabilities where possible and mitigate them otherwise.

It is possible, for example, to evaluate RP of SC plans, identify vulnerable functions, and decide optimum option to create resilient business system.

The present study takes a generic approach and creates bases to explore its application in any industry-based case.

The research introduces formulations for RPs and vulnerability indices that can be included in a planning model to create a resilient SC.

Workplaces vary enormously in the amount of harmful stress they produce, even within specific economic sectors. Stress of certain kinds and at certain levels tend to produce health harms and costs that are borne not only by individual employees and employers but also by families and society at large. Variations in stress levels within economic sectors can be traced to variations in management practices that govern key conditions of work involving demand, effort, control and reward. The costs of stress‐related disorders produced by adverse governance practices are transferred outside the workplace in varying degrees. The actual extent of this cost transfer depends on policies and programs within the workplace. We can characterize workplaces according to a typology in which the key dimensions are commitment to abate harm through participatory management practices and the effectiveness and efficiency of harm containment through programs such as employee assistance and health promotion. The most health‐promoting and cost‐avoiding workplaces foster high control, high reward conditions and support employees with employee assistance and health promotion programs. The policy implications of this observation are drawn out.

Asking probing questions about marketing costs is another way of asking whether what one does for customers matters to them.

Research suggests that employee engagement favorably influences the provision of customer service, that high levels of service employee engagement are rare, and that firms' strategic profit emphases affect engagement and service climate. This study responds to calls for research that identifies drivers of employee engagement and foundational issues that promote effective service climates within service organizations.

A survey method is utilized to assess data from 502 key informant service employees from multiple service industries.

The findings indicate that service organizations' revenue enhancement and cost containment strategic profit emphases differentially influence employee engagement, and that organizational and job engagement differentially influence service climate.

Data comprised of individual service employees' perceptions of their firms' strategic profit emphases and service climates are utilized. Although it is conceivable that some respondents' perceptions of these variables may be misguided, the study findings are based on a large sample of experienced service employees from multiple service industries.

The findings suggest that the most effective approach for promoting effective service climate is to hire service employees with a track record of job engagement and then focus on encouraging organizational engagement by creating working environments that support, value, and reward service quality.

Managers increasingly realize that how firms treat service employees critically affects customer service quality. However, relatively few studies examine service employees' perceptions of their own engagement and their organizations' working environments. This research incorporates social exchange theory and concepts from the fields of strategy and organizational behavior to assess service employees' perceptions of their organizations' strategic profit emphasis and its influence on engagement and service climate.

This chapter aims to measure the total impact of conflict and violence to the global economy. By aggregating the most recent research on the costs of specific types of violence such as organized conflict, homicide, battle deaths, military spending, and incarceration, a comprehensive country-specific cost of violence and violence containment methodology is developed. The estimated benefit to the global economy of perfect peacefulness is at least 9.8 trillion dollars over the long run.

Discusses James Buchanan′s contribution to the important topic of cost‐containment in the area of health care. Historical and ideational in its thrust, it seeks also to make a more general contribution by showing how the methodology of public choice can be applied to a specific issue in economic and social policy. Examines the precise body of theory which Buchanan brings to bear when attempting a politico‐economic calculus of consent. Considers the causes of the rise in the cost of health and assesses Buchanan′s anxieties in respect of the burden. Discusses Buchanan′s solutions and explores alternatives to the options he endorses. Concludes that Buchanan′s answers may not appeal to all readers, but they are a fruitful area of research and speculation.

This study aims to provide insights into management accounting changes (MACs) and potential roles of big data analytics (BDA) in accelerating the MACs in an Indonesian public hospital as a response towards the adoption of the diagnosis-related groups (DRG)-based payment system.

A mixed-method approach was used to collect and analyse data from a referral public hospital in Indonesia. First, a BDA simulation was carried out to reveal its usefulness in predicting and evaluating patient costs, and finally improving the cost recovery rate (CRR) of each DRG case. This part formulated and tested the mathematical models that predict patient cost, the CRR and determinants (length of stay/LOS, severity/SEV, patient age/AGE and gender/SEX). For this purpose, data of the top ten inpatient cases of 2018 were collected and analysed. Second, semi-structured interviews with senior staff and doctors were carried out to understand cost control strategies implemented in the hospital and the management and doctors’ perceptions regarding the application of tested mathematical models for cost control. Old institutional economics and new institutional sociology were used to gain insight about how and why management accounting practices changed in the hospital.

The findings show that the absence of detailed per-case/patient cost information has not only hindered further evolvement of MACs but also stimulate tensions between managerial and medical worlds in the studied Indonesian public hospital. The simulation of BDA in this study was not only discovering the determinants of case cost recovery but also enabling the prediction of CRR of patients immediately after admission. The application of BDA and casemix accounting in the hospital will potentially become catalysts of discussion and mutual learning between managerial and medical staff in controlling patient costs.

This paper provides a more comprehensive picture of the potential roles of BDA in cost control practices. The study assesses the feasibility of BDA application in the hospital and evaluates the potential roles and acceptance of BDA application by both management and doctors.

Value-based health care (VBHC) argues that health-care needs to re-focus to maximise value creation, defining value as the quota when dividing the outcomes important for the patient, by the cost for health care to deliver such outcomes. This study aims to explore the perception of value among different stakeholders involved in the process of implementing VBHC at a Swedish hospital to support leaders to be more efficient and effective when developing health care.

Participants comprised 19 clinicians and non-clinicians involved in the implementation of VBHC. Semi-structured interviews were conducted and content analysis was performed.

The clinicians described value as a dynamic concept, dependent on the patient and the clinical setting, stating that improving outcomes was more important than containing costs. The value for non-clinicians appeared more driven by the interplay between the outcome and the cost. Non-clinicians related VBHC to a strategic framework for governance or for monitoring different continuous improvement processes, while clinicians appreciated VBHC, as they perceived its introduction as an opportunity to focus more on outcomes for patients and less on cost containment.

There is variation in how clinicians and non-clinicians perceive the key concept of value when implementing VBHC. Clinicians focus on increasing treatment efficacy and improving medical outcomes but have a limited focus on cost and what patients consider most valuable. If the concept of value is defined primarily by clinicians’ own assumptions, there is a clear risk that the foundational premise of VBHC, to understand what outcomes patients value in their specific situation in relation to the cost to produce such outcome, will fail. Health-care leaders need to ensure that patients and the non-clinicians’ perception of value, is integrated with the clinical perception, if VBHC is to deliver on its promise.