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During years 2014-2016, Veterans Health Administration National Surgery Office conducted a surgical flow improvement initiative (SFII) to assist low-performing surgery programs to improve their operating room efficiency (ORE). The initiative was co-sponsored by VHA National Surgery Office and VHA Office of Systems Redesign and Improvement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

An SFII algorithm, based on first-time-start (FTS), cancellation rate (CR), lag time (LT) and OR utilization, assigned an ORE performance Level (1-low to 4-high) to each VA Medical Center (VAMC). In total, 15 VAMCs with low-performance surgery programs participated in SFII to assess the current state of their surgical flow processes and used redesign methods to focus on improvement objectives.

At the end of the project, 14 VSAs, 40 RPIWs, 45 “90-day projects” and 73 Just-Do-It’s were completed with 65 percent (158/243) improvement actions and 86 percent sites improving/sustaining all four ORE metrics. There was a statistically significant difference in improvement across the three stages (baseline, improvement, sustain) for FTS (45.6-68.7 percent; F=44.74; p<0.000); CR (16.1-9.5 percent; F=34.46; p<0.000); LT (63.1-36.3 percent; F=92.00; p<0.000); OR utilization (43.4-57.7 percent; F=6.92; p<0.001) and VAMC level (1.7-3.65; F=80.11; p<0.000). The majority developed “fair to excellent” sustainment (91 percent) and spread (82 percent) plans. The projected annual estimated return-on-investment was $27,949,966.

The SFII successfully leveraged a small number of faculty, coaches, and industrial engineers to produce significant improvement in ORE across a large national integrated health care network. This strategy can serve healthcare leaders in managing complex healthcare issues in their facilities.

The purpose of this paper is threefold: to extend the animosity model developed by Klein et al. (1998) by adding cultural and religious animosity constructs, to provide a tool with which to measure the cultural and religious constructs and to provide explanations, and thus an understanding, of how cultural and religious differences impact consumer intention to purchase.

Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to test the model.

The cultural and religion animosity scale is created.

This fills a gap in the literature where there is not currently a scale to measure cultural or religious animosity.

In the competitive retailing environment, retailers who provide service experiences that stand out from the competition can gain a competitive advantage. Increasingly, an important aspect of the service experience involves product returns, in particular, the fairness of returns policies and procedures. Previous research studies support that interpersonal justice and informational justice relate positively to consumer attitudes and behaviors. In this paper, the authors examine the relative effects of interpersonal justice and informational justice on return satisfaction, positive word-of-mouth (PWOM) and trust. Additionally, the authors examine the moderating effects of returns process convenience and returns policy restrictiveness as indicators of procedural justice.

A scenario-based experiment methodology was used to test the relationships of interest.

Results support that the effects of interpersonal justice on the outcome variables are stronger than the effects of informational justice. There is also support for a moderating effect of returns process convenience on the relationships between interpersonal justice and each outcome variable, as well as partial support for the moderating effect of returns policy restrictiveness on the relationship between interpersonal justice and PWOM.

The research extends previous work on the effects of justice on customer outcomes. Results support the importance of retailers treating customers with fairness during the returns experience and further support the benefits of providing a convenient returns experience.

Both online and brick and mortar retailers have invested heavily in developing omni-channel service offerings. Though seen as a competitive necessity, these omni-channel service offerings increase costs and complexities. The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of strategies involving bundles of omni-channel services related to order fulfillment and returns management on retailer performance.

Archival data were obtained for 152 retailers and analyzed using ordinary least squares regression. Robustness tests using an alternative dependent variable and a model-based classification strategy corroborate our findings.

Retailers offering full sets of high integration omni-channel services (buy online pick up in store, ship from store and in-store returns) have better performance (e.g. sales, growth and competitive position) and web sales than retailers that offer only a partial mix of these high integration services. Retailers offering a partial bundle of high integration services, in turn, have better performance and web sales than retailers that offer none of these services.

The research extends work that has examined the performance effects of omni-channel services on individual retailers. Our results indicate retailers benefit the most when offering a full set of high integration omni-channel services, suggesting retailers who have only adopted a subset of these services could improve performance through broader adoption of services. The results further indicate partial adoption of high integration services is better than no adoption.

During the past decade the role of purchasing in global competitiveness has been steadily increasing in importance. Similarly, the role of packaging continues to increase in importance because of its dual function in advertising and shipping. The purpose of this paper is to employ the Quality Function Deployment (QFD) methodology to analyze the common purchasing problem of supplier selection for toothpaste packaging. Thus, a technique well known in quality management is adapted for use in the entirely new context of supplier selection in purchasing.

The paper begins by stipulating the properties necessary for suitable packaging. It then examines the type(s) of packaging necessary to satisfy these properties. Finally, it moves to the selection of a supplier having the necessary properties to provide packaging. The analysis is performed with a QFD construct.

The QFD process led to a rapid identification of those suppliers most capable of providing the product characteristics that met the corporate total value goal at the time of study.

The paper presents a structured management approach to deal with the common problem of supplier selection. In doing so, it provides an approach that may be generalized to solve many types of decision problems confronting operations and supply chain managers.

This paper presents a management approach to the very important area of supplier selection. In doing so, it employs a technique well known in the product design area, but not used in the area of supplier selection, that of Quality Function Deployment (QFD). It extends beyond the dyad in that it brings to bear a powerful technique from the Quality Management discipline to a problem in another discipline, Purchasing.

The purpose of this study is to determine the extent that extrinsic product attributes (brand name/packaging) influence consumers' perceptions and resulting evaluation of intrinsic product attributes, quality, and purchase intention.

A 2 (brand) x 2 (treatment group) experimental “taste‐test” design was created using two brands of cookies (national versus store brand) and two treatment conditions (whether the cookie was in its respective package or placed in the competitor's package). T‐tests were used to compare mean scores of six product attributes (taste, texture, appearance, purchase intent, value) measured on five‐point bi‐polar adjective Likert scales.

Subjects' evaluations of the national brand were significantly higher compared to the store brand across five of the six cues with the exception of value (as measured by willingness to pay MSRP) when the national brand was in its respective packaging. Subjects also rated the national higher on four of the six cues when it was in the store brand bag. The reverse was not found when the store brand cookie was in the national brand bag.

The results suggest that store brand managers must increase the quality of their product if they expect to capture market share from the national brands. Further research is recommended using other brands and product categories.

Store brands may be able to narrow the market share gap with the national brands only if the quality of the store brands increase. Consumers are more objective in evaluating intrinsic cues than previously thought.

The nation's first Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were founded before the end of the U.S. Civil War. However, most were established in the post-Civil War era, through the Freedmen's Bureau and other organizations such as the American Missionary Association (AMA) when the U.S. federal government initiated an organized effort to educate newly freed slaves (Hoffman, 1996). Additional support for HBCUs arose from the second Morrill Act of 1890, which provided opportunities for all races in those states where Black students were excluded from public higher education. Thus, since their founding in the 1800s, the nation's HBCUs have had as their missions to provide access to higher education for the disenfranchised and underprivileged of our society. Today, these institutions continue to make significant contributions in educating African American and other underrepresented minority students, particularly in the areas of science and engineering. Although they comprise only 3% of U.S. institutions of higher education, HBCUs in 2008 awarded 20% of the baccalaureate degrees earned by Blacks in science and engineering (National Science Foundation, 2011).

Randy Pitman, an eloquent critic of librarians' print bias, has publicly noted a fact that should be obvious: referring to audiovisual materials in terms of what they are not (e.g., “non‐book materials”) automatically affords them second‐class status. Another media activist, Don Roberts, asserts that many selectors of multimedia library materials consider them to be “frivolous, secondary, or just plain negligible in content by comparison with printed materials.” In an article published twelve years ago which offered practical suggestions for overcoming “ingrained and inherent ‘printism,’” he listed alternative media producers and distributors, noted review sources outside the standard library literature, and provided other ideas for countering “the mistaken belief that you are required to leave your high‐fidelity, sensory‐aware self at home, or in your car, or at the concert hall, when you go to work at the library.” Today, he still finds “people who continue to specialize in formats, sentimentalize them, and try to perpetuate this or that medium as the pinnacle of consciousness…sometimes denying others access to formats which might be more appropriate to them in the process.” We are all multimedia beings, Roberts says: There is no way that books alone will enable us to “transform, inspire, and enliven.” Compiled with those thoughts in mind, the following annotated list of media producers and distributors which specialize in social issues—ethnicity, labor, peace, environment, and human rights, to name a few—primarily emphasizes independent and less well‐known media productions. Also worth noting are review sources like Angle—a publication covering work by women filmmakers (P.O. Box 11916, Milwaukee, Wl 53211, 414–963–8951; $20 individual, $30 institutional), Black Film Review (P.O. Box 18665, Washington, DC 20036; $12 individual, $24 institutional), and the lesbian/gay‐oriented Out in Video (Persona Press, Box 14022, San Francisco, CA 94114; $10).