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Reviews the literature of purchasing and transportation management to identify factors in the purchasing and transportation processes that influence a firm’s ability to reduce total cycle time. Presents a model of these factors to establish a framework for guiding research into comprehensive, systematic approaches to total cycle time reduction. In addition, the total cycle time model serves as a blueprint for practitioners in evaluating, in specific organizations, the effect of the purchasing and transportation processes on total cycle time. Although much of the research reviewed herein dates to the early 1980s its consideration as part of a comprehensive, systematic examination of the total cycle time concept is new.

The hospital–physician relationship (HPR) has been the focus of many scholars given the potential impact of this relationship on hospitals’ ability to achieve socially and organizationally desirable health care outcomes. Hospitals are dominated by professionals and share many commonalities with professional service firms (PSFs). In this chapter, we explore an alternative HPR based on the governance models prevalent in PSFs.

We summarize the issues presented by current HPRs and discuss the governance models dominant in PSFs.

We identify the non-equity partnership model as a governance archetype for hospitals; this model accounts for both the professional dominance in health care decisions and the increasing demand for higher accountability and efficiency.

There should be careful consideration of existing regulations such as the Stark law and the antikickback statue before the proposed governance model and the compensation structure for physician partners is adopted.

While our governance archetype is based on a review of the literature on HPRs and PSFs, further research is needed to test our model.

Given the dominance of not-for-profit (NFP) ownership in the hospital industry, we believe the non-equity partnership model can help align physician incentives with those of the hospital, and strengthen HPRs to meet the demands of the changing health care environment.

This is the first chapter to explore an alternative hospital–physician integration strategy by examining the governance models in PSFs, which similar to hospitals have a high reliance on a predominantly professional staff.

Our purpose is to critically discuss the quality of governability and scrutiny of, as well as insight in, enterprises owned by local government. Our analysis is empirically grounded in an in-depth case study of one of Sweden’s 10 largest municipalities. The ambition is to highlight troublesome areas and danger zones when it comes to public owning of corporations. We have consulted diverse types of material: conducted document studies, as well as semi-structured in-depth interviews. In addition, we have conducted a survey directed to 156 individuals (which is the total population of councillors and members of municipal corporation boards in the municipality we have studied).

From an in-depth study of Sweden, we show that corporatising parts of local governments’ operations have serious implications for accountability. Our study therefore adds to the knowledge about hybrid organisations and the challenges dual logics of the private and public sector imposes on political governance as well as management. The result of this study is based on one single case study in one specific hybrid context. No empirical generalisation is aspired to. Instead the aim has been to – by way of an explorative approach – make an analytical contribution to our knowledge about hybrid organisations. Further studies are thus necessary in order to deepen our understanding of the hybrid context and the situations under which hybrid organisations operate and develop.

This study increases our knowledge regarding the challenges of governing hybrid organisations in general and enterprises owned by local government in particular. Therefore, the findings of this study are considered to be of support to politicians as well as civil servants involved in and responsible for the governance of hybrid organisations. We argue that it is important to carefully supervise this development in local government. As corporations owned and operated by local governments have increased in numbers, they are responsible for large values and services that are crucial for the modern society (water, waste management, energy, IT). Consequently, they are becoming ever more important players in their respective local economies. At the same time, concerns have been raised regarding how to govern hybrid organisations in order to secure accountability and to protect public sector values.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the implementation of mobile learning in a nursing course at The Open University of Hong Kong, and identify the potentials of, and constraints on, introducing mobile technologies in the instructional design of nursing education. The paper also considers the pedagogical implications of the expansion of mobile learning in the field of nursing.

The research adopts a qualitative approach to obtain the students’ and teacher’s experiences, opinions, and expectations on mobile learning. Two focus groups with 20 student participants were conducted and an in-depth interview with the course teacher was arranged. The Framework for the Rational Analysis of Mobile Education (FRAME) model was used as the research framework to support data collection and analysis.

The aspects of device usability, interaction learning, and social technology as suggested in the FRAME model were partly fulfilled in the study. Mobile technology enhanced the portability and accessibility of learning information, and networking tools facilitated interaction among students and between students and the teacher. However, the readability of text was limited due to constraints on the user interface and screen size, and concerns over the reliability of learning content were also raised, given the abundance of unfiltered online information. The difficulty in updating the content of multimedia materials and sourcing videos of an appropriate level, together with the problem of device networking, also limited the usefulness of mobile learning. Attention should also be paid to the perceptual differences between students and the teacher on the nature and functions of mobile learning.

This empirical study provides a detailed evaluation of the delivery of mobile learning in a nursing course. The findings reveal the strengths and limitations of using mobile technologies to support the nursing education.

Over the last few years, the European Central Bank (ECB) has adopted unconventional monetary policies. These measures aim to boost economic growth and increase inflation through the bond market. The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the ECB’s quantitative easing (QE) on the investor’s behavior in the stock market.

First, the authors theoretically identify the transmission channels of the QE shocks to the stock market. Then, the authors empirically assess the financial market’s responses to QE shocks in a data-rich environment using a factor augmented VAR (FAVAR).

The results show that the ECB’s unconventional monetary policy positively affects the stock market. A QE shock leads to an increase in stock prices and a drop in the realized volatility and the implied risk premium. The authors also suggest that the ECB’s QE is transmitted to the stock market through five main channels: the liquidity, the expectation, the portfolio reallocation, the interest rates and the risk premium channels.

The findings help to better understand the behavior of stock market assets in a data-rich economic context and guide investors and policymakers in the presence of unconventional monetary tools. For instance, decision-makers and investors should consider the short-term effect of the QE interventions and the changing behavior of the financial actors over time. In addition, high stock market returns can increase risk appetite. This can lead investors to underestimate the market risk. Decision-makers and market participants should take into consideration the impact of the large injection of money through the QE, which may raise the risk of a speculative bubble in the financial market.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that incorporates a theoretical and empirical analysis to explore QE transmission to the stock market in the European context. Unlike previous studies, the authors use the shadow rate proposed by Wu and Xia (2017) to quantify the effect of the ECB’s QE in a data-rich environment. The authors also include two key risk indicators – the stock market risk premium and the realized volatility – to capture investors’ behavior in the stock market following QE shocks.

This paper aims to describe an application of key concepts in agency theory to organizational development. Specifically, it seeks to highlight that formal control systems, the ways to regulate employees' performance, are associated with an important factor for organizational development – the capacity for improvement.

The paper presents a literature review on organizational development and agency theory, and an empirical examination of the relationships between bureaucratic control systems, task programmability and the organization's capacity for improvement. The hypotheses of interrelationships among different control systems, task programmability and the capacity for improvement were tested with a sample of 237 employees in the service industry.

Results indicate that input control is a significant factor in determining an organization's capacity for improvement, and task programmability moderates the relation between a bureaucratic control and the organization's capacity for improvement.

The results are based on a cross‐sectional self‐report study. It is advisable to include managers' assessment of subordinates' capacity of improvement in further research.

The effect of formal controls on organizational performance was controversial. This paper reveals the moderating role of task programmability in a control‐performance relationship. In doing so, this paper sheds light on how a manager can enhance his/her subordinates' performance on organizational improvement through different control tactics.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

This paper aims to test whether passive Wi-Fi visitor analytics is a useful and effective method to measure consumer engagement towards food trucks located within an outdoor activation area at an Australian metropolitan university.

Using passive Wi-Fi visitor analytics to ping and track smart devices, data was collected over 90 weekdays capturing data from 522,548 unique smart devices.

The data collected in this feasibility study was able to identify the most and least popular food trucks by displaying the differences in both bounce and engagement rates, suggesting that passive Wi-Fi visitor analytics are feasible and useful in this context. Furthermore, the results also demonstrate that food truck vendors and marketers should not engage in random rotation, but instead remain static to try and increase familiarity.

Current visitor tracking technology (i.e. ticketed sales, sales data and survey) is limited as it may not provide an accurate measurement of foot traffic, identify engaged patrons who passed by but did not complete a purchase and be available due to commercial sensitivity and confidentiality. Thus, the current research is the first to examine customer engagement (i.e. unengaged walk-by vs engaged but bounced vs engaged sales) with food trucks within an activation area by using passive Wi-Fi visitor analytics.

当前的论文旨在研究被动 Wi-Fi 访客分析是否是衡量消费者对位于澳大利亚城市大学户外活动区域内的流动餐车的参与度的有用且有效的方法。

使用被动 Wi-Fi 访客分析来跟踪智能设备, 从 522,548 个独特的智能设备收集了超过 90 个工作日的数据。

该可行性研究中收集的数据能够通过显示跳出率和参与率的差异来识别最受欢迎和最不受欢迎的流动餐车, 这表明被动 Wi-Fi 访客分析在这种情况下是可行和有用的。 此外, 我们的结果还表明, 流动餐车供应商和营销人员不应随意轮换, 而应保持静止从而增加顾客熟悉度。

当前的访客跟踪技术（即售票销售、销售数据和调查）是有限的, 因为它可能无法：（1）提供客流量的准确测量; (2) 识别路过但未完成购买的参与顾客; (3) 由于商业敏感性和保密性而可用。 因此, 目前的研究是第一个通过使用被动 Wi-Fi 访客分析来检查激活区域内流动餐车的客户参与度（即, 未参与路过, 相比于参与但跳出, 相比于参与售出额）。

Over the past few years, business‐to‐business (B2B) e‐commerce has grown exponentially. To conduct B2B e‐commerce, companies need a common language. HTML is not suited for this task, because it defines only the information’s format instead of its meaning. XML has been shown to not only be the most natural evolution of Web technologies to support modern applications such as e‐commerce, but also be the preferred means of making legacy data available to users via the Internet. Since XML is still in its infancy, early versions of XML do not include the fundamental feature of specifying and enforcing integrity constraints, which is critical to making XML a viable and long‐term approach for representing data over the Web. In other words, XML provides little support to make sure the data being represented satisfy the business rules specified. Reviews the trends in B2B e‐commerce and discusses the critical needs to support constraints and the integrity of data, which are very important to the success of B2B e‐commerce. Also presents the next generation of XML technology for representing constraints. Concludes with a summary of the impact of the new XML on B2B e‐commerce and its future challenges.