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This article aims to analyze existing and preferred labor divisions between physicians and nurses treating patients with hypertension and diabetes in managed care organizations.

A mail survey was conducted in 2002/2003 among a representative sample of 743 physicians employed by Israel's largest managed care health plans (78 percent response rate). A telephone survey among a representative sample of 1,369 hypertensive or diabetic patients (77 percent response rate) was also used.

Findings reveal a conspicuous gap between actual labor division and what physicians perceive to be ideal. Possible reasons for this gap are discussed and strategies for facilitating collaboration, which would improve service quality as well as work life quality for both physicians and nurses.

This study provides empirical data on the extent of nurse involvement in managed care organization chronic patient care, as well as comparing them to physicians' preferences regarding nurse involvement.

Many of us who believe that governments continue to grow relentlessly, at least in the economically advanced countries, have been criticized by analysts who claim that in fact the growth of government has petered out or slowed substantially. Those who advance such claims perceive us to be needlessly alarmed, and they fault us for a failure to acknowledge the decisive turn of events associated with the so-called Reagan and Thatcher revolutions of the 1980s. Not to worry, they exhort us; the statists are on the run, and a brave new world of market-oriented liberalism shimmers on the horizon (Boaz, 2003).

Many K-12 teachers teach difficult topics as part of their curricula, and discussions of difficult topics are common across grade levels and content areas. As teachers increasingly engage with difficult topics in their classrooms, the need for high-quality professional learning experiences has also grown. In response, the purpose of this article is to introduce an emerging partnership between the Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights Education Initiative at Penn State and the Red Lion Area School District (Red Lion, Pennsylvania), conceptualized from the outset with an explicit focus on intentionally engaging in collaborative, inquiry-based professional learning surrounding difficult topics in formalized curricula and within educational practice.

The article briefly describes how the partners came together, then provides a high-level overview of how they approached their first year of collaboration. Next, the partners’ adaptation of inquiry-based professional learning is outlined. The article concludes by discussing lessons learned from the first year of partnering and implications for scholarship in the areas of school-university partnerships, inquiry-based professional learning, and difficult topics.

The article observes that it took educators participating in a difficult-topics inquiry community an entire year to begin shifting ownership of inquiry to K-12 students. It illustrates how school-university partnerships can be used to support difficult-topics inquiry and raises new questions about the role of difficult topics in partnership work.

The article contributes an original example to the literature that demonstrates how inquiry-based professional learning focused on difficult topics can provide a powerful basis for forming a school-university partnership.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an insight into distinguish cost leaders from the architects of diversification (Porter, 1985) using a non-central principal component analysis (PCA)-based approach. The central theme of this paper is based on the assumption that the operational strategy of a competing firm can be understood by observing its resource consumption and technological practice vis-à-vis its rivals present in the market.

Depending on the previous surveys, two inputs (spending per student and percentage of non-poor income group) and two outputs (average scores attained by students in science group and in language group six private schools, located within the outskirt of Durgapur) were analyzed.

Out of six schools (A, B, C, D, E and F), A, E and F were found efficient; however, the proposed model identifies that out of them, only E and F remain cost efficient. The efficiency scores, due to cost, are very close to the outputs of other three accepted papers.

The input and output vectors have to be non-negative. In case of a negative input (output) set, separate treatment must be applied on them before the application of non-central PCA. Any decision-making unit (DMU) producing an output of 0 will prohibit the use of the non-central PCA.

It can be applied to problems which may or may not be having the information regarding input price for detecting cost-efficient DMUs as in the case of the Banker’s model. Banker’s model remains inconclusive about the fact, whether a DMU is a mere cost leader or it is reigning in both fields. Present model does not have such limitations. Targets to remain cost efficient can be obtained for any competing DMU. Unlike the Banker’s model, the proposed one ascribes unequal weight to the cost of consumption to each resource. This weight vector is determined from the industrial practice. It remains unique in the sense that it relies on few intermediate input variables to measure the performance of a DMU. These variables are dependent on large number of other independent variables, which reflect the extent of its control on the resources to signify the strategic position of it. Moreover, the proposed model offers an ideal frontier of ultimate performers, which provides a very stringent benchmark based on constant return to scale for incorporating those renowned organizations, which operate in various places in West Bengal. However, it also offers lower limits of performance to the strongly efficient performers by using the goal-oriented data envelopment analysis for analyzing the problem on a local basis. The extended model, in addition, is worthy of carrying out SDEA operations.

Under the present scenario, a new model is proposed here to concentrate on the variation present in the market due to specific consumption of resources. All inputs are assumed scarce and desirable for the production of each output (Liu et al., 2010). Thus, a good cost-cutting performance occurs because of an economic use of resources while fulfilling the standards. Unlike Taguchi et al. (1989) and Taguchi (1991), a linear societal loss function, which is solely adhered to the resource consumption, is added here instead of a formal cost function.

The central theme of this paper is as follows: determination of technical efficiency scores for the schools; determination of economic efficiency (with partial information about price); identification of cost leaders and differentiation architects; to prescribe the model of a cost leader so that education can be imparted to a full potential; and to prescribe a non-central PCA and a slack-based optimization model. Superiority in the domain of cost leadership is decided based on the closeness of any DMU from this frontier.

This paper aims to discuss the effect of Canada’s regulatory framework on the strategies of entrepreneurial businesses during the first phase of legalization of the recreational cannabis industry. Decriminalization of cannabis required a host of regulatory changes at the federal, provincial and municipal levels. Each province developed legal markets independently, differentially impacting entrepreneurial strategies. This paper describes the value chain that emerged in the first phase of the nascent industry, focusing on the actions of the businesses.

The authors develop a qualitative narrative analysis using government publications, press articles (especially from the business press) and personal communications of industry insiders speaking in public settings. The paper includes four short case studies to illustrate the emerging value chain of the nascent industry.

The study’s findings highlight the effect of regulatory frameworks on entrepreneurial strategies. We find that public policies had a significant impact on entrepreneurs and startup strategies. Inter-jurisdictional differences limited expansion into different provinces, with implications for regional economic development. Achieving public policy goals was delayed as a result of regulatory challenges that impacted industry development.

The authors’ findings show enterprises may develop growth strategies that comply with regulations when participating in nascent industries, but they must cope with extra risks, capital costs and uncertainty. The analysis also illustrates the value of engaging in government-industry collaboration to improve emerging regulatory frameworks.

The originality of this research consists of the detailed description of the first phase of Canada’s legalized recreational cannabis industry and the insight gained into the dynamics of nascent industries.

To research involvement of healthcare staff in the UK and identify practical organisational and policy solutions to improve and boost capacity of the existing workforce to conduct research.

A mixed-method study presenting three work packages here: secondary analysis of levels of staff research activity, funding, academic outputs and workforce among healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom; 39 Research and Development lead and funder interviews; an online survey of 11 healthcare organisations across the UK, with 1,016 responses from healthcare staff included for analysis; and 51 interviews of healthcare staff in different roles from six UK healthcare organisations.

Interest in research involvement is strong and widespread but hampered by a lack of systematic organisational support despite national policies and strategies to increase staff engagement in research. While useful, these external strategies have limited universal success due to lack of organisational support. Healthcare organisations should embed research within organisational and human resources policies and increase the visibility of research through strategic organisational goals and governance processes. A systems-based approach is needed.

The research gathered data from a limited number of NHS trusts but these were purposively sampled to provide a range of different acute/community health service organisations in different areas. But data was therefore more detailed and nuanced due to a more in-depth approach.

The findings are relevant for developing policies and practice within healthcare organisations to support research engagement. The findings also set out key policy and strategic recommendations that will support greater research engagement.

Increased research activity and engagement in healthcare providers improves healthcare outcomes for patients.

This is a large scale (UK-wide) study involving a broad range of healthcare staff, with good engagement of nurses, midwives and Allied Healthcare Professionals who have not been previously achieved. This allowed valuable analysis of under-researched groups and comparisons by professional groups. The findings highlight the need for tailored action to embed research reporting, skills, professional development and infrastructure into organisational policies, strategies and systems, along with broader system-wide development.

Real estate developers often operate in oligopolistic environments. Pricing strategies must be made in an interactive framework that makes empirical evaluation difficult. This study appeals to economic experiments to examine how developers price their properties, especially when there is an option to market pre‐completed units. In addition, the interaction between bidding for land and pricing the end product is examined. The results indicate that competitor actions are important considerations in pricing decisions. In particular, the profit maximizing pricing strategy depends critically on being competitive, not necessarily being the most aggressive. Interestingly, pre‐completed units sell only at prices that incorporate future price expectations, and successful bids tend to precipitate more aggressive pricing. Finally, competitive bidding and pricing strategies appear to the best profit maximizing strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to express the strategic positioning of a firm among its rivals based on an overall analysis. The proposed model uses data envelopment analysis (DEA) to determine the indexes due to cost leadership and differentiation. The model can be useful to identify the true cost leaders and those who are stuck in the middle. This work suggests the way how the strategic position can be explored from the consumption of resources (unlike the prevalent models like Banker et al., 2014).

Depending on the previous surveys, two inputs (spending per student and percentage of non-poor income group) and two outputs (average scores attained by students in science group and in language group in six private schools, located within the outskirt of Durgapur) were analyzed.

The classification made on the basis of the result of the proposed model reveals that out of the six schools (A, B, C, D, E and F), A, E and F occupy a strong position in this context, whereas B can be an example of stuck in the middle scenario. It not only has to reduce cost by 30 percent but also improve the differentiation index by 140 percent. C and D are lagging behind as they do not have enough differentiating qualities.

Only six schools were taken for the analysis. Second, the input and output vectors had to be non-negative. In case of a negative input (output) set, separate treatment must be applied to them before the application of non-central PCA. Any decision-making unit producing an output of 0 will prohibit the use of the non-central PCA.

The extant study provides the indices to measure cost leadership and differentiation strategies for the classification as per the generic strategies. A firm which is lagging behind can adjust its consumption to remain successful.

According to Hillman and Jenkner (2002), the developing countries lack the willingness of a primary school to impart education to children. The current study is used to explore whether any private primary school has the same goal or not. They also pointed out the possible future consequences while stating that the cost of educating children from the poorer section might be outweighed by the cost of not educating them and adults lacking basic skills had greater difficulty in finding well-paying jobs to escape poverty. So it is important to understand the role of a private primary school to offer seats to underprivileged students for educating them. The intention of six private primary schools toward educating the population of the small area within Durgapur is analyzed in this study, The study revealed that few schools spend more to serve the students belonging to upper classes to remain successful, whereas few schools as a differentiator make conscious attempts for providing services to poorer sections in an economical manner like a cost leader.

The extant research aims to formulate the determining methods of identifying strategic groups (proposed by Hunt, 1983) to make a parity between business definition view and strategic type concepts. The model can assess the rivals within an industry to explore the true cost leaders and those who are stuck in the middle using DEA. There are not enough kinds of literature which could effectively measure them.

Identification of the best school among other competitors is done using a new technique called most productive scale size based data envelopment analysis (DEA). The paper aims to discuss this issue.

A non-central principal component analysis is used here to create a new plane according to the constant return to scale. This plane contains only ultimate performers.

The new method has a complete discord with the results of CCR DEA. However, after incorporating the ultimate performers in the original data set this difference was eliminated.

The proposed frontier provides a way to identify those DMUs which follow cost strategy proposed by Porter.

A case study of six schools is incorporated here to identify the superior school and also to visualize gaps in their performances.