Xiaosong (David) Peng, Yuan Ye, Raymond Lei Fan, Xin (David) Ding and Aravind Chandrasekaran
This research aims to explore the fine-grained relationships between nurse staffing and hospital operational performance with respect to care quality and operating costs. The…
Abstract
Purpose
This research aims to explore the fine-grained relationships between nurse staffing and hospital operational performance with respect to care quality and operating costs. The authors also investigate the moderation effect of competition in local hospital markets on these relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
A six-year panel data is assembled from five separate sources to obtain information of 2,524 USA hospitals. Fixed-effect (FE) models are used to test the proposed hypotheses.
Findings
First, nurse staffing is initially associated with improved care quality until nurse staffing reaches a turning point, beyond which nurse staffing is associated with worse care quality. Second, a similar pattern applies to the relationship between nurse staffing and operating costs, although the turning point is at a much lower nurse staffing level. Third, market competition moderates the relationship between nurse staffing and care quality so that the turning point of nurse staffing will be higher when the degree of competition is higher. This shift of turning point is also observed in the relationship between nurse staffing and operating costs.
Practical implications
The study identifies three ranges of nurse staffing in which hospitals will likely experience simultaneous improvements, a tradeoff or simultaneous decline of care quality and operating costs when investing in more nursing capacity. Hospitals should adjust nurse staffing levels to the right directions to achieve better care or reduce operating costs.
Originality/value
Nurses constitute the largest provider group in hospitals and profoundly impact care quality and operating costs among all health care professionals. Optimizing the level of nurse staffing, therefore, can significantly impact the care quality and operating costs of hospitals.
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This paper aims to analyze and give directions for advancing research in stock market volatility highlighting its features, structural breaks and emerging developments. This study…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze and give directions for advancing research in stock market volatility highlighting its features, structural breaks and emerging developments. This study offers a platform to research the benchmark studies to know the research gap and give directions for extending future research.
Design/methodology/approach
The author has performed the literature review, and, reference checking as per the snowballing approach. Firstly, the author has started with outlining and simplifying the significance of the subject area, the review illustrating the various elements along with the research gaps and emphasizing the finding.
Findings
This work summarizes the studies covering the volatility, its properties and structural breaks on various aspects such as techniques applied, subareas and the markets. From the review’s analysis, no study has clarified the supremacy of any model because of the different market conditions, nature of data and methodological aspects. The outcome of this research work has delivered further magnitude to research the benchmark studies for the upcoming work on stock market volatility. This paper has also proposed the hybrid volatility models combining artificial intelligence with econometric techniques to detect noise, sudden changes and chaotic information easily.
Research limitations/implications
The author has taken the research papers from the scholarly journal published in the English language only and the author may also consider other nonscholarly or other language journals.
Originality/value
To the best of the author’s knowledge, this research work highlights an updated and more comprehensive framework examining the properties and demonstrating the contemporary developments in the field of stock market volatility.
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Thejas Ramakrishnaiah, Prasanna Gunderi Dhananjaya, Chaturmukha Vakwadi Sainagesh, Sathish Reddy, Swaroop Kumaraswamy and Naveen Chikkahanumajja Surendranatha
This paper aims to study the various developments taking place in the field of gas sensors made from polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposites, which leads to the development of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the various developments taking place in the field of gas sensors made from polyaniline (PANI) nanocomposites, which leads to the development of high-performance electrical and gas sensing materials operating at room temperature.
Design/methodology/approach
PANI/ferrite nanocomposites exhibit good electrical properties with lower dielectric losses. There are numerous reports on PANI and ferrite nanomaterial-based gas sensors which have good sensing response, feasible to operate at room temperature, requires less power and cost-effective.
Findings
This paper provides an overview of electrical and gas sensing properties of PANI/ferrite nanocomposites having improved selectivity, long-term stability and other sensing performance of sensors at room temperature.
Originality/value
The main purpose of this review paper is to focus on PANI/ferrite nanocomposite-based gas sensors operating at room temperature.
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Vijaya Sunder M., L.S. Ganesh and Rahul R. Marathe
The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on Lean Six Sigma (LSS) for services, construct a morphological analysis (MA) framework and identify research gaps…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review the existing literature on Lean Six Sigma (LSS) for services, construct a morphological analysis (MA) framework and identify research gaps to point to future research possibilities and priorities.
Design/methodology/approach
The MA framework is based on literature review of 175 papers published from 2003 to 2015, across 67 journals recognised by Scopus or ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide 2015. A three-phased methodology is used by the authors, with Phase1 featuring a five-stage systematic review protocol to identify relevant journal papers for review; Phase2 presenting a framework for classifying the reviewed papers in terms of their fundamental, methodological, chronological and sector-wise orientations; and Phase3 constructing an MA framework on the classified papers and identifying the research gaps.
Findings
The MA framework constructed based on six dimensions, namely, organizational context of applications, desired outcomes, implementation systems, LSS tools and techniques, integration with other management philosophies and evaluation methods, involving 40 focused themes, has revealed 355 distinct research gaps as opportunities for future research.
Practical implications
This paper confirms the existence of substantial scope and points to specific topics for further research in the area of LSS for services. The findings demonstrate the gaps in academic research on the subject. In addition, the study also helps organisational leaders and practitioners to look at LSS from a holistic perspective in the services context.
Originality/value
The MA framework of the existing literature on LSS for services presents a unique, systematic effort to identify research opportunities. In addition, a five-stage systematic review protocol is proposed in this paper. This could be valuable to researchers and practitioners in enabling them to systematically review the literature on research subjects of interest to them.