Arguably waste management, in its various guises, has been subjected to more analysis at the community level than any other environmental sector to date. This attention spans…
Abstract
Arguably waste management, in its various guises, has been subjected to more analysis at the community level than any other environmental sector to date. This attention spans geographical boundaries with community-based waste organisations, particularly those focused on recycling, minimisation and reuse, subjected to critical analysis across Africa (Myers, 2005) and Asia (Forsyth, 2005), as well as in North America (Adhikari, Trémier, Martinez & Barrington, 2010; Weinberg, Pellow & Schnaiberg, 2000), New Zealand (White & du Preez, 2005) and the UK (Luckin & Sharp, 2003). While all focused broadly on matters of sustainability and governance, the first explicit analysis of community-based waste initiatives as grassroots sustainability enterprises was undertaken in Ireland in the mid-2000s (Davies, 2009).
The author, who teaches mathematics in a private school in Yorkshire, gives his view of the importance of school maths, the stages in learning it, and the main factors which lead…
Abstract
The author, who teaches mathematics in a private school in Yorkshire, gives his view of the importance of school maths, the stages in learning it, and the main factors which lead to effectiveness in teaching it. The conclusions he reaches have relevance fur beyond the field of elementary maths teaching
Kirsten de Beurs, Kyle Harper and Le Wang
The European Marriage Pattern (EMP) was characteristic of preindustrial northwestern Europe and, in recent years, has been proposed as an important factor in the rise of the West…
Abstract
The European Marriage Pattern (EMP) was characteristic of preindustrial northwestern Europe and, in recent years, has been proposed as an important factor in the rise of the West. Yet, the origins and ultimate causes of the EMP remain obscure. We examine a novel hypothesis that the EMP can emerge in geographic environments with a lighter infectious disease burden. We overcome significant challenges facing empirical analysis of premodern societies. Using a large, individual-level database of marriages from the county of Kent, England, as well as a spatial regression discontinuity approach, we demonstrate a robust association between physical ecology and female age at first marriage (FAFM). We also find that the two potential channels proposed in the literature play starkly different roles in explaining our finding. Specifically, we fail to find that pastoralism plays any significant role in explaining the EMP, while the mortality rate channel accounts for a significant portion of the observed relationship between the disease environment and FAFM.
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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of an effort to use social media generated data for measuring patient satisfaction with medical care services. Traditionally…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the results of an effort to use social media generated data for measuring patient satisfaction with medical care services. Traditionally, scientifically designed patient satisfaction surveys are used to provide such measurements. The goal here is to evaluate the possibility of supplementing patient satisfaction surveys with social media generated patient satisfaction measurements such that the later can be used either as validation or replacement for the former. Although surveys are scientifically designed to yield dependable results, recent studies have revealed multiple factors relating to the methods currently used for survey data collection, that may be contributing to the limitations of many survey results. In light of such criticisms, this study explored the possibility of using the increasing popular and proactively generated consumer ratings through the pervasive social media as data source for satisfaction measurement. The average satisfaction scores created from such data are then used to compare levels of satisfaction among five types of health service businesses.
Design/methodology/approach
The data used in this research are garnered from the consumer review social media site called “Yelp!”. Ratings and reviews that are related to health and medical services were extracted from the “Yelp!” database. The types of services that are identified by consumers are standardized to typologies that are traditionally used in health service research. Five types of services were targeted – general practice physician offices, physician specialty services, dentists, hospitals and physical therapy services. The “five-star” rating systems were re-coded to form a five-point ordinal scale variable to represent “satisfaction score”.
Findings
The Yelp! data-based measurement of patient satisfaction produced an overall satisfaction score of 3.8 (SD=1.7) for the sampled services. The average satisfaction score per type of service ranged from 3.16 (SD=1.83) for specialty physicians to 4.52 (SD=1.57) for physical therapists. In general, dentists and physical therapists received higher average satisfaction scores as compared to the other medical services.
Research limitations/implications
Because this study was meant to evaluate the utility of social media generated data to measure satisfaction, in general, the estimates cannot be construed as representative of any underlying geographically defined population. They, however, do have a “cohort” interpretability. This limitation is not inherent to the use of the data source. If some geographically identifiable representation of the measurement data is desired, identifiable business data can be generated from the Yelp! system to specifically target relevant populations following the method that are tested in this study.
Practical implications
Under certain circumstances, such as the size and maturity of the gathered data, social media generated data can be a useful as a “fortuitous” alternative to satisfaction surveys for evaluating patient satisfaction with medical care. This is propitious as there have been some indication by studies that the advent of communication media in the twenty-first century may be undermining the reliability of scientifically designed surveys.
Originality/value
The use of social media generated data as “alternative” or “secondary” data source for research use is currently being widely investigated. To the author’s knowledge, this is the only paper that evaluated the use of “Yelp!” data as a possible source for population-based formal satisfaction measurement for healthcare services.
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David Gibbs and Kirstie O’Neill
Purpose – There has been a growing interest in the development of a ‘green’ or ‘low carbon’ economy as a means of reconciling economic development and the environment. Research on…
Abstract
Purpose – There has been a growing interest in the development of a ‘green’ or ‘low carbon’ economy as a means of reconciling economic development and the environment. Research on green entrepreneurs to date has been upon individual entrepreneurs, neglecting wider economic and social contexts within which they operate. By looking at these wider networks of support, we suggest that discourses of the lone entrepreneur innovating and changing business practices are misrepresentative.
Methodology/approach – Semi-structured interviews to investigate green entrepreneurship with green building companies and policy makers.
Findings – Combined with new demands from consumers for more environmentally friendly products and services, the changing shape of national and global economies is leading to new forms of entrepreneurship. We identify a number of tensions between policy intentions and businesses’ experiences on the ground.
Research limitations/implications – To date, research has only been undertaken in the UK – we recommend that future research takes other national contexts into account. Other economic sectors also represent promising areas for future research, potentially including social enterprises in the green economy. Sustainability transitions theories offer a potentially valuable means for understanding the role of businesses in engendering a green economy.
Practical implications – Implications for policy frameworks are outlined in the conclusions.
Originality/value of chapter – By incorporating policy and support organisations, and informal networks of support, the chapter challenges the dominant view of the lone entrepreneurial hero and points to the significance of networks for facilitating green entrepreneurship. This will be of importance for policy makers and funders of entrepreneurship programmes.
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Chia-Wen Chang, Ting-Hsiang Tseng and Arch G. Woodside
– This empirical study aims to explore sufficiency conditions for patient loyalty to a hospital.
Abstract
Purpose
This empirical study aims to explore sufficiency conditions for patient loyalty to a hospital.
Design/methodology/approach
The study collected 645 self-administered questionnaires from patients in a major medical center in Taiwan and applied fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) to explore the sufficiency conditions for patient loyalty.
Findings
The findings support the conclusion that the three conditions (patient satisfaction, patient participation in the process of diagnosis, and patient participation in treatment decision-making) in combination are sufficient for high patient loyalty to the hospital but high patient satisfaction alone is insufficient. While the three conditions in configural algorithm are sufficient, this expression is not necessary, which means the findings do not reject possible alternative conditions for high patient loyalty.
Research limitations/implications
The study applies a relatively new method, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fs/QCA) to test the sufficiency proposition of the theory. This method enables researchers to focus on examining sufficient conditions without worrying about various confounding factors and informs this study ' s conclusion that patients exhibiting high scores in all three conditions mentioned above constitute a near-perfect subset of highly loyal patients. Hospitals thus should provide their satisfied patients opportunities to share a role in the process of diagnosis and treatment decision-making.
Originality/value
Along with patient satisfaction, this study clearly identifies two important stages of patient participation (i.e., participation in the process of diagnosis and treatment decision-making) that are important in forming patient loyalty to a hospital. Prior studies do not present empirical evidence to this proposition.
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Matti Haverila, Kai Christian Haverila and Jenny Carita Twyford
This study assesses the impact of marital status towards customer-centric measures in a Canadian ski resort using the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) as the analytical…
Abstract
Purpose
This study assesses the impact of marital status towards customer-centric measures in a Canadian ski resort using the importance-performance map analysis (IPMA) as the analytical framework. For the purpose of this paper, the three groups that were assessed included singles, partnership without children and partnership with children as marital status indicators. From the theoretical and especially managerial point of view, knowing the importance and the performance of the relevant ski resort-related customer-centric perceptions is of key importance.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey was completed to assess customer-centric measures including customer satisfaction, repurchase intent, value for money, willingness to recommend, overall performance in terms of meeting expectations, relationship quality and skiing service quality. An IPMA was conducted with partial least square-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to assess the importance-performance perceptions of the three marital status groups.
Findings
The results indicated that for five of the seven customer-centric measures, there were significant differences between the marital status groups. Overall, singles appeared to have the lowest values in customer-centric measures, whereas respondents living in partnership with children had the highest. This was also the case with the value for money perceptions, although the cost for the ski resort visit was likely to be the highest for the respondents living in partnership with children. There were also differences between the marital status groups in terms of the importance-performance evaluations.
Originality/value
Results of this research have implications for ski resort management as the three marital status groups appear to perceive the customer-centric measures quite differently in the IPMA framework.
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Prescription drug requests and physician denial are important aspects of medical decision making, but little research has been done to identify factors linked to prescription drug…
Abstract
Purpose
Prescription drug requests and physician denial are important aspects of medical decision making, but little research has been done to identify factors linked to prescription drug request and physician denial. This paper aims to explore factors in relation to patient prescription drug request and provider denial.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on a cross‐sectional study in a nationally representative database of 2,988 individuals. Descriptive and multivariate stepwise conditional logistic regression analyses were conducted.
Findings
Results of multivariate regression models reveal, after adjusting for personal factors, that heart disease, allergy, anxiety, minor chronic conditions, medical seeking behaviors and direct‐to‐consumer advertising (DTCA) were found to be related to prescription drug request. The denied were individuals with arthritis, less prevalent chronic conditions, the uninsured, and African Americans. It was also found that 27.4 percent of the sample requested a prescription drug and about 24 percent of those who segmented for prescriptions were physicians.
Research limitations/implications
DTCA is positively associated with prescription drug requests but the analysis did not support any effect of DTCA on the refusal status. Patients' requests and physician decision making to refuse are somewhat complicated and vary with different medical conditions.
Originality/value
The paper, using nationally representative data, investigates the factors associated with prescription drug request and denial.
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Charles Zabada, Sanjay Singh and George Munchus
The rapid changes taking place in the health care sector have prompted health care organizations to pay more attention to the satisfaction of their patients. Many healthcare…
Abstract
The rapid changes taking place in the health care sector have prompted health care organizations to pay more attention to the satisfaction of their patients. Many healthcare providers are therefore looking for ways to improve their performance as perceived by patients. This article points out the growing importance of the concept of patient satisfaction, and suggests that one of the ways to improve patient satisfaction rating is to put more emphasis on the use of appropriate information technology in the delivery of healthcare. A framework through which improvement can happen is designed to help managers conceptualize the process.
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Judith Kennedy and Michael Kennedy
Purpose – To examine the introduction of a practice known as Donation after Cardiac Death (DCD) into Australian hospitals notwithstanding that DCD constitutes a significant shift…
Abstract
Purpose – To examine the introduction of a practice known as Donation after Cardiac Death (DCD) into Australian hospitals notwithstanding that DCD constitutes a significant shift in medical practice. The shift is from holding off organ donation activities until after death has occurred (the Brain Death Scenario and Uncontrolled Cardiac Death Scenario) to progressing the injured patient to organ donor on the basis of an early prognostic call. The more precise term is ‘Controlled DCD’. What is controlled are the timing, location, mode and criteria of death.Findings – Controlled DCD first appears as an ‘inpatient trial’ in Pittsburgh, United States, in 1992, and has progressed, via various organisations and committees, to being used in a number of countries, including Australia and New Zealand, and being embodied in national, state and hospital protocols. Along the way, concerns that previously precluded such activity have been consistently raised and documented. Operational accounts reported in the medical literature do not acknowledge this history or the ethically problematic aspects of the practice. It is likely that these operational reports and related information sources, together with promotion of the positives of organ donation, have facilitated the practice’s progress through the relevant institutional committees.Social implications – Much is at stake when the quest for more organ donors starts changing what can be done to patients. How this practice has come to be tolerated in 2012, despite a number of irresolvable ethical issues, is a matter of vital community interest.Originality/value of chapter – This chapter is part of an ongoing study by the authors.