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Considers the quality of service between internal partners within a company looking at how this can influence performance and quality. Looks at the different ways of defining the internal customer and suggests that measurement is most effective when complex procedures are broken down. States that internal marketing is a critical issue facing marketing professions, human resources and other executives. Argues that if poor service is provided between employees it is unlikely that good service will ultimately be provided to the external customer. Invites further research in this area.

Defines polychronic time as the consumer’s ability to do a number of things at once and explains that it has been studied by researchers in an attempt to understand how individuals regard new products and services and their potential to save time or enhance polychronicity. Examines the literature on this subject with particular reference to Internet marketing. Generates a number of hypotheses for future research.

Until recently stakeholder communication has tended to be mostly unidirectional and simple. However, the advent of the Internet has brought unprecedented change. Stakeholder communication is no longer unidirectional, and as stakeholders increasingly communicate with each other this communication becomes infinitely more complex. Unfortunately many of the tools and models of PR were developed and refined in a pre‐Internet world. This paper introduces an integrated Internet stake‐holder communication matrix (I²SCM), and explains its use for the identification of issues that need to be managed with regard to the Internet and2 PR.

Excellence and quality would be regarded by most managers as worthy objectives. These managers would also, in all likelihood, agree on the importance of imbuing their organisation with a market orientation, and believe that these factors contribute to corporate performance. A sterner interpretation of this, however, would necessitate a more in‐depth understanding of these constructs. What is excellence? Is there a link between excellence and a market orientation? Is the market oriented service firm more concerned with understanding and managing customer expectations and delivering a reliable service? How do these variables affect corporate performance? While there are studies linking a number of these individual constructs to performance, (Berry and Parasuraman, 1991; Peters and Waterman, 1982; Narver and Slater, 1990; Narver, Park and Slater, 1992; Jaworski and Kohli, 1993) less work appears to have been done on investigating the more complex relationships between these constructs. The objectives of this article are to propose the existence or otherwise of relationships between excellence, market orientation, expectations management practices, “being reliable”, and corporate performance, and, to suggest ways in which these can be studied in service firms.

The new economy, or knowledge‐based era, not only brings with it additional challenges to the employee communication process, but also inspired solutions. Historically, employee communication has been constrained by the limitations of traditional media. The choice of media for the dissemination of information has increased over the years but none has had the potential to galvanise broad‐sweeping changes to the process as have intranets. To maximise the benefits for their organisations, communicators must become comfortable working with the new technology, progress up the technology‐adoption curve, learn to balance tech with touch, and be prepared to deconstruct previously held models of communication.

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are complex and comprehensive software designed to integrate business processes and functions. Despite the difficulties and risk, the adoption of ERP systems is expanding rapidly. Universities make large investments in information systems and expect positive impacts. However, universities are facing serious challenges in implementing new technology. Therefore, this research aims to evaluate the impact of ERP systems on higher education (HE) from the perspective of stakeholders’ performance.

This research paper conducted a case study of an ERP system in a Saudi university to explore the impact of ERP system on the performance of the system’s stakeholders among the university’s employees.

The system quality factors (flexibility, compatibility, availability of right data, availability of currency, ease of use and timeliness) were found to affect performance positively, as were service quality factors (tangibility, reliability, responsiveness and assurance). This research further found that factors from pre-implementation, implementation and post-implementation phases had a direct effect on stakeholders’ performance.

Future research would be useful during the maturity phase to include all stakeholders in several Saudi universities. In addition, more research can be beneficial to test the applicability of the impact of the ERP system on stakeholders’ performance in other public sector organisations and in the private sector.

The results suggest that organisations in general and HE institutions in particular should focus on the early stages and the implementation phase if they wish to achieve high standards of stakeholder performance.

This research makes a novel contribution by attempting to evaluate the impact of service quality on stakeholder performance in the ERP environment. The contribution uses service quality as a dimension consisting of four factors – reliability, assurance, tangibility and responsiveness. All four factors were found to be significant on ERP stakeholders’ performance.

As commercial and military aircraft continue to be subject to direct lightning flashes, there is a great need to characterize correctly the electrical currents and electric potential fluctuations on an aircraft to determine alternative design approaches to minimizing the severity of the lightning-aircraft dynamics. Moreover, with the increased severity of thunderstorms due to global warming, the need arises even more to predict and quantify electrical characteristics of the lightning-aircraft electrodynamics, which is normally not measurable, using a reliable electric model of the aircraft. Such a model is advanced here. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The case considered in this paper is that of an aircraft directly attached to an earth flash lightning channel. The paper develops a new approach to modelling the aircraft using electric dipoles. The model has the power to represent sharp edges such as wings, tail ends and radome for any aircraft with different dimensions by using a number of different sized dipoles. The distributed transmission line model (TLM) of the lightning return stroke incorporating the distributed aircraft model is used to determine aircraft electrical elements and finally the electric current induced on the aircraft body due to lightning's interaction with the aircraft. The model is validated by the waveform method and experimental results.

The dipole model proposed is a very powerful tool for minute representation of the different shapes of aircraft frame and to determine the best geometrical shape and fuselage material to reduce electric stress. This charge simulation method costs less computer storage and faster computing time.

The paper for the first time presents a computer-based simulation tool that allows scientists and engineers to study the dynamics of voltage and current along the aircraft surface when the aircraft is attached to a cloud to ground lightning channel.