bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Quality evaluation in health care services based on customer‐provider relationships
Authors: Eiriz Vasco , António Figueiredo José 
Published: January 2007

PurposeTo develop a framework for evaluating the quality of Portuguese health care organisations based on the relationship between customers and providers, to define key variables related to the quality of health care services based on a review of the available literature, and to establish a conceptual framework in order to test the framework and variables empirically.Design/methodology/approachSystematic review of the literature.FindingsHealth care services quality should not be evaluated exclusively by customers. Given the complexity, ambiguity and heterogeneity of health care services, the authors develop a framework for health care evaluation based on the relationship between customers (patients, their relatives and citizens) and providers (managers, doctors, other technical staff and non‐technical staff), and considering four quality items (customer service orientation, financial performance, logistical functionality and level of staff competence).Originality/valueThis article identifies important changes in the Portuguese health care industry, such as the ownership of health care providers. At the same time, customers are changing their attitudes towards health care, becoming much more concerned and demanding of health services. These changes are forcing Portuguese private and public health care organisations to develop more marketing‐oriented services. This article recognises the importance of quality evaluation of health care services as a means of increasing customer satisfaction and organisational efficiency, and develops a framework for health care evaluation based on the relationship between customers and providers.
Technology usage, quality management system, and service quality in Thailand
Authors: Sivabrovornvatana Nilubon , Siengthai Sununta , Krairit Donyaprueth , Paul Himangshu 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThis article aims to explore the relationship between technology and quality management for enhancing Thai hospital service quality.Design/methodology/approachThe paper presents the findings of an exploratory study that investigates service quality from the customer and service provider perception. In‐depth interviews were conducted with respondents in Thai hospitals. The interviews explored service‐related factors that patients and service providers perceive to be important for hospital services. The first interview group consisted of professionals as internal customers in direct contact with external customers, while the second group consisted of external customers of the same hospitals.FindingsThe study's outcomes clearly suggest factors that make significant contribution to service quality. These factors can be categorized according to five SERVQUAL dimensions (reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangibility), although some factors required slightly different interpretation.Originality/valueThe findings suggest that hospitals can develop an appropriate approach to their advantage, which can yield sustainable improvement in service quality as perceived by patients and professionals. Hospitals can make better quality decisions based on structured measurement and knowledge. It is recommended that managers apply this knowledge for successful implementation of activities related to service quality in their organizations.
Preliminary outcomes and cost‐benefit analysis of a community hospital emergency department screening and referral program for patients aged 75 or more
Authors: Warburton Rebecca N. 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThe purpose of this article is to report preliminary outcome and cost‐benefit results for a patient safety quality improvement program intended to improve outcomes for patients aged 75 or more visiting the Emergency Department (ED). The program uses the Identification of Seniors at Risk (ISAR) scale to screen, and refers patients at high risk for appropriate intervention.Design/methodology/approachThe Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act improvement cycle was used as a framework. Simple outcomes have been assessed by comparing patient sub‐groups based on risk status and interventions received. Cost and benefits were assessed based on estimated program outcomes and average costs. Sensitivity analysis was performed to test alternate assumptions.FindingsThe screening tool appears to be accurate, and screening and referral appears to have a positive impact, reducing length of stay, returns to the ED, and subsequent admissions to hospital. However, most results are not statistically significant at the 95 percent level. The value of avoided care exceeds program costs under most assumptions.Originality/valueScreening and referring all eligible patients has still not been achieved; these are areas for future investigation and improvement. Screening and referral appear to be effective in improving outcomes but because program costs were low, net benefits may have been achieved; however given global budgeting for hospital care improvements in the use of resources (rather than budgetary savings) would be expected. The methods for improvement (the Plan‐Do‐Study‐Act framework; process evaluation; multidisciplinary working group meetings; outcome assessment) are practical and useful for improving quality and safety in a small community hospital with limited resources.
An empirical study of patients' expectations and satisfactions in Egyptian hospitals
Authors: Mostafa Mohamed M. 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThis paper seeks to investigate how patients perceive service quality in Egypt's public and private hospitals. The paper also tests the SERVQUAL dimensions in hospitals within an Arab, non‐Western context.Design/methodology/approachThe author used a cross‐sectional questionnaire survey, performed in 2005. A sample of 332 patients from 12 hospitals in Egypt participated in the study.FindingsThe results highlighted a three‐factor solution for the SERVQUAL instrument with 67 per cent of variance explained. This result does not support the five‐components original SERVQUAL. A discriminant function was estimated for patients who selected public hospitals and those who selected private hospitals. The model was found to be significant in explaining patients' choice of the type of hospital.Research limitations/implicationsThe use of quantitative methods alone is valuable in establishing relationships between variables, but is considered weak when attempting to identify the reasons for those relationships. Patients may have a complex set of important beliefs that cannot be captured in the questionnaire. Therefore, using qualitative research along quantitative methods in future studies may enhance the findings of this study.Originality/valueThis article will be of interest to both public and private hospitals wishing to determine what patients expect from the quality of service provided to them.
Assessing executive leadership: an integral approach
Authors: Volckmann Russ 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThe paper offers an example of an approach to translating integral concepts into language that is accessible to executive leaders in business without resorting to introducing the complexity of integral theory and models.Design/methodology/approachThe phase of intervention is data gathering prior to feedback of data, action planning or change interventions. The model is presented along with examples of its implementation. The methodology and implementation follows principles derived from organization development and change methodologies.FindingsTime availability for “educational interventions”, particularly in the initial phases of an intervention with executives is usually very limited. Having an approach that is integrally informed supports the gathering and organization of quality data from interviews and lays the foundation for individual and team coaching interventions that may include introduction of integral models and concepts to support executive leadership. The approach clarifies for the individual and the executive team their views of the requisite priorities, skills and processes for effectiveness within the team and in relation to stakeholders.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper is suggestive of a more comprehensive approach to research on leadership and its development in organizations.Practical implicationsSince contracting for change is a critical element in successful interventions, an integral approach fosters more effective contracting due to the thoroughness of data identified.Originality/valuePresents an application of integral theory that is unique and that has been tested in organization change interventions at the executive level.
Scientification, immune responses, and reflection
Authors: Nicolai Alexander T. , Röbken Heinke 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThere is little consensus among academics on how to treat management fashions. The aim of this paper is to point out how management scientists have previously dealt with consulting concepts and which ways of dealing with them seem to be appropriate.Design/methodology/approachThe debate surrounding management fashions alludes to the topic, how academia demarks its borders. Thus, a concept is required with which management studies and practice can be described as distinct entities in order to juxtapose the two spheres. This is done by applying Niklas Luhmann's systems theory to the realm of management studies.FindingsThe development of academia's attitude toward consulting concepts can be subdivided into three different phases: management academics considered consulting concepts as quasi‐scientific element; these concepts were then interpreted as a “foreign body”: and, finally, they were an object of scientific reflection. The last phase includes a transformation that has started only recently. From the perspective of the theory of self‐referential systems this change can be described as a sound development and it seems unlikely that academic approaches and consulting concepts will converge. In this perspective the non‐academic character of such consultancy‐concepts becomes evident‐just like their hidden usefulness.Originality/valueProvides insights on how management scientists deal appropriately with consulting concepts. The change in attitude towards fashionable management concepts provides information not only about the consultancy concepts, but also about an altered self‐conception of management studies.
Actionable knowledge: consulting to promote women on boards
Authors: Adams Susan M. , Flynn Patricia M. 
Published: January 2007

PurposeDescribes how actionable knowledge is created to successfully initiate consulting relationships designed to promote changes in the composition of corporate boards and, ultimately, social change to eliminate exclusionary practices that are keeping women from consideration for board seats.Design/methodology/approachExamines the work of The Boston Club in promoting women on corporate boards to build needed theory to guide change efforts.FindingsConcludes that no one theoretical perspective supplies the necessary guidance. Presents a model that combines psychodynamic, organizational learning, open systems, and critical management studies views.Originality/valuePresents the push/pull approach taken by The Boston Club that addresses perceived social constraints and psychological needs involved in changing behavior to create commitment to adding women to boards. Suggests that the sequencing of push and pull techniques may be an important consideration in designing change efforts.
Marks and Spencer–waiting for the warrior
Authors: Rippin Ann 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the gendered narratives of change management at Marks and Spencer (M&S) and uses them as a lens to consider the gendered nature of the change process itself.Design/methodology/approachTwo extant stories: Sleeping Beauty and the Trojan War are taken, along with the cultural archetype of the American West gunslinger to explore the gender aspects of change. The Marks and Spencer case is analysed using the corollary patriarchal narrative of Sleeping Beauty, a story whose organising logic is revealed as one of concern for patriarchal lineage, and legitimate succession. The paper, draws on the Marks and Spencer principals' memoirs and biographies.FindingsSleeping Beauty is shown as a narrative saturated in misogyny, aggression and violence. This violence, which is shown to characterise the Marks and Spencer case, is amplified in the second narrative, the Trojan War, in the highly personalised battles of the über‐warriors of The Iliad. The paper concludes that violent, hyper‐masculine behaviour creates and maintains a destructive cycle of leadership lionisation and failure at the company which precludes a more feminine and possibly more effective construction of change management.Originality/valueDemonstrates how M&S, gendered from its birth, its development through the golden years, the crisis, its changes in leadership and its recent change management has attempted to respond to its changing environment.
New meanings for entrepreneurs: from risk‐taking heroes to safe‐seeking professionals
Authors: Hytti Ulla 
Published: January 2007

PurposeTo underline that viewing entrepreneurship in the context of shifting career roles and professional identities, gendered organizational life and in the current societal context regarding working life (ageing, gender discrimination) provides us with new lenses and enables us to perceive the entrepreneurial identity as fluid and emergent.Design/methodology/approachA female entrepreneur's life‐story collected through a narrative interview is applied in the study. In this paper identities, organizations and societies in change form the basis for entrepreneurship. Treating entrepreneurship as a social process constrained by time and place allows it to gain new meanings and understandings of security, reliability, risk‐moderation that it has not previously seen to possess.FindingsThe paper presents the connections of time and place for entrepreneurship; first, by demonstrating how entrepreneurship as a phenomenon reflects the time and place of investigation; second, how time and place are applied as important elements in the individual story presented in the paper, and, third, how readings of time and narrative are applied to make sense of entrepreneurship in the story.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper suggests that the social context (different times, places as well as, e.g. different roles, social identities and careers) should more frequently be studied within entrepreneurship research.Practical implicationsBy portraying entrepreneurship from the non‐economic and non‐heroic standpoint, and reflecting the social changes that surround it, entrepreneurship is potentially made more accessible for a larger number of people.Originality/valueThe paper refuses the research of entrepreneurs as a general overriding, economic category and the quest for the “Theory of Entrepreneurship”.
Leadership in Romania
Authors: Aioanei Ingrid 
Published: January 2007

PurposeWhat is leadership, how do Romanians relate to their organization's leaders, which are the most common leadership behaviors and which leadership style is best for Romania? This paper attempts to address these issues.Design/methodology/approachData were collected on actual Romanian leadership and preferences in leadership's styles. The questions were grouped according to the two major continuums: autocratic style versus democracy style and task orientation versus relationship orientation.FindingsRegarding the autocratic style‐democratic style dimension, Romanian leadership leans towards the autocratic style and research results show that leaders in Romania are 55 percent authoritarian and 45 percent democratic. Romanian leaders are inclined towards less involvement of subordinates and frequently retain the final decision. They make use of coercion. The autocratic dimension is slightly higher in state‐owned enterprises, due to the strong centralization and to the remains of communism. The research also indicates that men are more task‐orientated (71.8 percent) than women (64 percent). Since, Romanian organizational leaders are task oriented (67 percent) and authoritarian (55 percent), the conclusion drawn is that Romanian leaders fit in the “Military Man” pattern. This conclusion was expected because Romanians exhibited a strong dictatorial leadership during communism. However, Romanian leaders of the future will move from the Military Man type to the Academician type, which is still goal‐centered, but has a more democratic leadership approach. Results also showed that Romanians would like to have leaders more democratic‐oriented (95 percent) than authoritarian (5 percent). This is an important shift.Originality/valueThis paper develops a better understanding of Romanian leadership, a subject that has been largely ignored. The paper offers important knowledge and ideas on that which is considered to be organizational leadership in Romania, explaining its roots as well as its behavioral fruits and the contextual environment in which it takes place. Researchers who study organizations may also find the paper a rich source for future inquiry and a confirmation or challenge to their own opinions on leadership in Romania.
The discourse of Romanian universities
Authors: Chiper Sorina 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to address the discourse of Romanian universities as a mirror of the reformation process in the national higher educational system.Design/methodology/approachThe focus of this paper is on external and internal communication, on institutional identity and the symbiosis of orders of discourse. The paper highlights the prospective EU integration as a major trigger of change in the Romanian educational system. It then draws upon critical discourse analysis (CDA) as a relevant research approach and presents the results of conducting critical discourse analysis on a corpus consisting of the web site presentation of ten public and private universities, on three faculty and university prospectuses, and one promotional CD. Finally, the paper briefly compares the discourse of Romanian universities with the discourse of universities from the UK, France, Italy and Germany, and suggest lines for improvement.FindingsRomanian society is currently the site of ample reformation and one of the factors that trigger change is the prospective integration in the European Union. In higher education, change is enacted discursively though the emergence of new genres as the generalization of promotion as a discursive practice. The discourse of Romanian universities is heavily colonized by the EU discourse, but factors pertaining to local culture also resurface openly. Discourse is, indeed, a factor of change, but not the only one affecting it. The westernizing of Romanian university discourse needs to be backed up by a westernizing of patterns of thinking and behaving.Originality/valueThe paper presents insights into the discourse of Romanian universities.
Change in Romanian organizations: a management culture approach
Authors: Viorica Grigoruţă Maria 
Published: January 2007

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to identify means and opportunities available to managers in Romanian companies in order to successfully undergo the process of integration in the European Union, by accepting the cultural diversity in the global organization in the twenty‐first century.Design/methodology/approachThe objectives have in view the identification of the characteristics of change in Romanian companies by means of the organizational culture, the development of organizational culture in an unstable, changing environment and the identification of the present values and of those desired by the Romanian employees as managers or subordinates. The practical research took place by means of the questionnaire and the interview used for 26 managers with hierarchical positions in various companies in the city of Iasi. During their careers, they attended at least one “organizational development” course, they used questionnaires for 6 subordinates and are in the stage of research for the processes of product change in the management activities of the organization from the perspective of management culture.FindingsIn the end, the observations were made on 84 valid questionnaires and they allowed for the discovery of the ways of understanding and expression of the dimensions of organizational culture at the present moment and of the future level desired by the employees, in their relations with their co‐workers and with the managers in the analysed companies.Research limitations/implicationsThe way it was performed, the research allows for a series of common conclusions related to the way in which the management activity is currently conducted, especially in the Romanian companies which functioned under the authority of the state until 1990 and have preserved a series of traditional management mechanisms. Considering the evolution of the Romanian society, the steps that will be taken in knowing and applying the new tendencies and dimensions of management and organizational and individual development, the research will continue in the future, aiming at making suggestions regarding the adjustment capacity of Romanian companies, relating to the organizational culture, among others.Practical implicationsIn the organizations which were analysed for the research, the paper identified a preoccupation for the aspects connected to the dimensions of organizational culture and an orientation towards individual and organizational change concerning the “acceptance” of a new system of values.Originality/valueThe choice of the subjects and the conception of the system of values of the organizational culture led to a certain degree of originality of our research, allowing for the offering of necessary information and resources to the interested parties, as well as for the opening of future ways of analysing the change processes which will occur in the management of Romanian companies.
Romania's economic policy: rulers' wisdom will lead us
Authors: Burnete Sorin 
Published: January 2007

PurposeTo highlight the key‐role of macroeconomic management in a dysfunctional emerging market economy.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis – focused on the particular case of Romania, where the transition to market economy is underway – relies on two basic hypotheses. According to the former, the reform programs implemented during the 1990s failed to take into account some fundamental correlations such as the one between reform measures and the real state of the economy (more specifically, the presence or absence of distortions). Another important correlation must exist between various types of macroeconomic policies, whether designed to trigger changes in the real economy (e.g. transfer of ownership, etc.) or aimed at securing macro‐stabilization. According to the latter hypothesis, overlooking such correlations will jeopardize both macroeconomic equilibrium and the soundness of future growth.FindingsThe data illustrating the evolution of Romania's economy during 1995‐2003 confirm the aforementioned hypotheses. Although the economy started growing at a fairly‐high rate after 1999, growth has been mostly immiserizing and hardly sustainable since. This outcome can be illustrated by using well‐known models such as Bhagwati's generalized theory of distortions and welfare and Mundell's approach of macroeconomic policies under imperfect capital mobility.Originality/valueThe use of the “immiserizing growth” concept in depicting Romania's economic evolution after 2000 is most likely an element of originality. The paper might be valuable for emphasizing the imperfections of the Romanian “government‐central bank” tandem.