Current Issue : October - December Volume : 2013 Issue Number : 4 Articles : 6 Articles
Organizational change and transformation traditionally attracts many researchers to dedicate their\r\ntimes and energy to research, because it is one of the important research topics. However there\r\ndoes not seem to be enough research especially in Arab world such as Egypt, although the area is\r\none of the significant regions now. In this paper, author discusses three topics based upon a case\r\nstudy at a professional consulting firm in Egypt which is specialized in Kaizen ââ?¬â??continuous\r\nimprovement. (1) How did the firm acquire the know-how knowledge about Kaizen? , (2) How did\r\nthe customer of the consulting firm succeed in the QC Circle activities with the support of the firm? ,\r\n(3) What are the key factors for success both in of the firm and their customers? At the result, it is\r\nsupposed that the learning process at the firm could be interpreted with SECI model, and the\r\ninnovative transformation process in their customers could be interpreted by applying five Stages\r\nmodel (Liu, Nagayoshi and Iijima; 2012). Also the key success factors for Kaizen could be\r\nlocalization of Kaizen activities. The generalizability of these findings can be ascertained with more\r\nstudies in future....
One major undertaking that hospitals often must consider is outsourcing. However, before\r\nsenior leadership can give outsourcing a green light, they must consider (a) reasons why to\r\noutsource, (b) obstacles to outsourcing, (c) best practices of outsourcing, and (d) implications\r\nto hospital management. There are several large outsourcing vendors, the larger ones being\r\nSodexo and Aramark, and they use their size to demand lower prices and higher quality from\r\nsupply vendors, equipment merchants, and other service organizations. Smaller outsource\r\nvendors often do not enjoy this benefit. Obstacles to effective outsourcing are numerous in\r\nhealth care. The federal and state regulations, medical practices, and personal feelings can be\r\nfactors that affect the decision to use an outsourcing vendor. Obstacles aside, there are ââ?¬Å?best\r\npracticesââ?¬Â that can provide offsetting benefits to the hospital. Considering more than just the\r\nbottom line can be a bonus that assists senior leadership with the decision to outsource.\r\nManagement has many other areas to consider, such as addressing legal, ethical, and moral\r\nconcerns properly. The purpose of this study is to give hospital senior leaders a point from\r\nwhich to start. It is not intended to provide a definitive answer on whether or not to outsource....
E-learning is advantageous for trainees as well as for organisation. The purpose of this research\r\nis to discover determinants of effective online training. The different theoretical currents\r\ntreating the behaviour of individuals towards the technological innovation utilization permit to\r\nidentify variables that determine the efficiency of e-learning. In this setting, we have made\r\nreference to five theories that are: motivation theory, social cognitive theory, media richness\r\ntheory, technology acceptance theory and structure theory. This study rests upon a model\r\nelaborated by Lim and al (2007). This model contains individual, conception, technological and\r\nenvironmental factors. Empirical study is conducted on Tunisian 410 employees� sample.\r\nFactor analysis and structural equations have been used. Results suggest the importance of\r\nmotivation, face- to- face meeting, e-mail exchange, ease of use, contents of training, seniors�\r\nsupport and continuous learning culture for learning performance. Learning performance, in\r\nturn, affects transfer performance....
This paper investigates how individual service quality attributes under specified dimension rendered by\r\nArik Airline determine the image of the airline and passengers� loyalty to the airline. To achieve this, a\r\nwell-structured questionnaire was designed in line with SERVQUAL dimension scale to capture the\r\nairline opinion of the passengers about the service rendered to them, their opinion on whether the\r\nquality of service has any effect on the image of the airline and finally if the nature of the airline image\r\nhas any effect on repeat patronage. A total of 600 questionnaires were distributed to a randomly\r\nselected sample out of the average weekly passenger volume of 2465 passengers that utilize the Arik\r\nair carrier. Data collected were analyzed first using Factor analysis in order to factor out the three major\r\nservice quality dimensions and Pearson correlation coefficient was determined to ascertain the\r\nsignificant relationship between the factored service quality dimensions and the airline image. Finally, a\r\nrelationship was further determined between the airline image and the passengers� loyalty to the airline.\r\nResult from the analysis proved that there existed a strong statistically significant relationship between\r\nthe service quality variables and the airline image, indicating that the quality of the service the airline\r\noffers has a positive relationship with the airline image and the airline image also has a positive\r\nrelationship with the passengers repeat patronage. The study thus recommended that airline managers\r\nshould improve on the quality of service rendered to passengers since it is one of the determinants of\r\nthe airline image and the airline image also determines the passengers� choice of repeat patronage....
Materials management is an important issue for\r\nhealthcare systems because it influences clinical and\r\nfinancial outcomes. Before selecting, adapting and\r\nimplementing leading or optimized practices, a good\r\nunderstanding of processes and activities has to be\r\ndeveloped.\r\nIn real applications, the information flows and business\r\nstrategies involved are different from hospital to hospital,\r\ndepending on context, culture and available resources; it\r\nis therefore difficult to find a comprehensive and\r\nexhaustive description of processes, even more so a clear\r\nformalization of them.\r\nThe objective of this paper is twofold. First, it proposes an\r\nintegrated and detailed analysis and description model\r\nfor hospital materials management data and tasks, which\r\nis able to tackle information from patient requirements to\r\nusage, from replenishment requests to supplying and\r\nhandling activities. The model takes account of medical\r\nrisk reduction, traceability and streamlined processes\r\nperspectives. Second, the paper translates this\r\ninformation into a business process model and\r\nmathematical formalization.\r\nThe study provides a useful guide to the various relevant\r\ntechnology-related, management and business issues,\r\nlaying the foundations of an efficient reengineering of the\r\nsupply chain to reduce healthcare costs and improve the\r\nquality of care....
In this paper, we propose an experiential\r\napproach to tourist segmentation aimed at overcoming\r\nthe limits of both socio-demographic and context-specific\r\napproaches widely adopted in the literature and in\r\npractice. In this study, segmentation is carried out based\r\nupon the expected experiences of Chinese tourists at the\r\nShanghai World Exposition. The segmentation reveals\r\nfour tourist clusters with different interests in relation to\r\ntheir experiences in visiting the World Exposition. The\r\nclusters showed insignificant differences in the\r\ndemographics but proved to be powerfully discriminant\r\nin determining tourists� satisfaction and loyalty, which\r\naffirms the potential of the tourist experience being a\r\nsegmenting variable. Moreover, thanks to the analysis, an\r\nevaluation of the Shanghai World Exposition�s success in\r\nterms of visitors� satisfaction is provided....
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