The Kennedy Report will almost certainly become a defining moment in the history of UK healthcare. On the whole the NHS is poor at learning from history and there is a wealth of…
Abstract
The Kennedy Report will almost certainly become a defining moment in the history of UK healthcare. On the whole the NHS is poor at learning from history and there is a wealth of important information to be drawn from the report and the whole experience of Bristol. This article distils the essential clinical governance messages that risk being lost. While many of the issues can be viewed from an economic perspective, much of what is required is a change in attitude across whole health economies. The contribution that economics can make is to design appropriate incentive mechanisms to bring about desired behavioural change. It can also continue to promote informed debate on the proper meaning of efficiency and to highlight the features required for an appropriate and effective regulatory framework.
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This paper aims to examine the effects of traditional customer satisfaction (CS) relative magnitude and social media review ratings on hotel performance and to explore which…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the effects of traditional customer satisfaction (CS) relative magnitude and social media review ratings on hotel performance and to explore which online travel intermediaries’ review ratings serve as the most reliable and valid predictor for hotel performance.
Design/methodology/approach
In 2014, CS and hotel performance data were collected from the internal database of full-service hotels operated and managed by a large hotel chain in the USA. Each property’s social media review ratings data were hand-collected from major online travel intermediaries and social media websites.
Findings
The results of this study indicate that social media review rating is a more significant predictor than traditional CS for explaining hotel performance metrics. Additionally, the social media review rating of TripAdvisor is the best predictor for hotel performance out of the other intermediaries.
Research limitations/implications
This research contributes to the hospitality literature because it examines the incremental explanatory power of social media review rating and traditional CS on hotel performance. Among the leading online travel intermediaries, the findings show that TripAdvisor’s social media review rating has the most salient effect on hotel performance.
Practical implications
The result of this study provides useful practical implications for hotel marketers and revenue managers. This study assists hotel marketers and revenue managers in better allocating their budget for marketing and suggests ways for channel optimization.
Originality/value
The finding of this study will help revenue managers, marketing managers, and hotel owners make decisions regarding their marketing budget allocation to their social media marketing campaign and select the optimal online travel intermediaries as part of their channel management strategies.
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Arthur Brian Ault and Jessame Ferguson
The research project assessed information literacy skill changes in college students at two points in time, as entering first-year students in 2012 and as seniors in their senior…
Abstract
Purpose
The research project assessed information literacy skill changes in college students at two points in time, as entering first-year students in 2012 and as seniors in their senior seminar capstone courses in the 2015–2016 academic year. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
The Standardized Assessment of Information Literacy Skills (SAILS) individual test was the selected instrument. Version 1 of the test was used for first-year students and Version 2 was used for seniors. All testing was done in person in computer labs with a librarian or library staff member present to proctor the test. This resulted in obtaining 330 student results as first years and 307 as seniors, with 161 exact matches for both administrations of the test. Exact matching of student scores to demographic details pulled from the college’s student information systems were used in the analysis.
Findings
The analysis shows that overall first-year students tested below the 70 percent proficiency benchmark in all eight skill sets, but by the time they were seniors they scored above 70 percent in three skill sets. Male students and students of color performed lower than their counterparts, but these groups did demonstrate significant improvement in four skill sets by the time they were seniors. Students in the Honors program, those who took longer to complete the test as seniors, those with higher GPAs, those in Humanities majors, and those who had upper level course exposures to librarian information literacy instruction had higher performance on the test. There were no statistically significant results for students who were first generation, Pell Grant eligible, or were in-state or out-of-state residents.
Originality/value
There are few published studies that utilized the SAILS test for longitudinal institution-wide assessment. The majority of institutions that utilized the individual version of SAILS did so to determine change within a selected course, or set of courses, in the same semester and very few are published.
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Matthew D. Ferguson, Raymond Hill and Brian Lunday
This study aims to compare linear programming and stable marriage approaches to the personnel assignment problem under conditions of uncertainty. Robust solutions should exhibit…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to compare linear programming and stable marriage approaches to the personnel assignment problem under conditions of uncertainty. Robust solutions should exhibit reduced variability of solutions in the presence of one or more additional constraints or problem perturbations added to some baseline problems.
Design/methodology/approach
Several variations of each approach are compared with respect to solution speed, solution quality as measured by officer-to-assignment preferences and solution robustness as measured by the number of assignment changes required after inducing a set of representative perturbations or constraints to an assignment instance. These side constraints represent the realistic assignment categorical priorities and limitations encountered by army assignment managers who solve this problem semiannually, and thus the synthetic instances considered herein emulate typical problem instances.
Findings
The results provide insight regarding the trade-offs between traditional optimization and heuristic-based solution approaches.
Originality/value
The results indicate the viability of using the stable marriage algorithm for talent management via the talent marketplace currently used by both the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force for personnel assignments.
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The question of violence in hunter-gatherer society has animated philosophical debates since at least the seventeenth century. Steven Pinker has sought to affirm that…
Abstract
Purpose
The question of violence in hunter-gatherer society has animated philosophical debates since at least the seventeenth century. Steven Pinker has sought to affirm that civilization, is superior to the state of humanity during its long history of hunting and gathering. The purpose of this paper is to draw upon a series of recent studies that assert a baseline of primordial violence by hunters and gatherers. In challenging this position the author draws on four decades of ethnographic and historical research on hunting and gathering peoples.
Design/methodology/approach
At the empirical heart of this question is the evidence pro- and con- for high rates of violent death in pre-farming human populations. The author evaluates the ethnographic and historical evidence for warfare in recorded hunting and gathering societies, and the archaeological evidence for warfare in pre-history prior to the advent of agriculture.
Findings
The view of Steven Pinker and others of high rates of lethal violence in hunters and gatherers is not sustained. In contrast to early farmers, their foraging precursors lived more lightly on the land and had other ways of resolving conflict. With little or no fixed property they could easily disperse to diffuse conflict. The evidence points to markedly lower levels of violence for foragers compared to post-Neolithic societies.
Research limitations/implications
This conclusion raises serious caveats about the grand evolutionary theory asserted by Steven Pinker, Richard Wrangham and others. Instead of being “killer apes” in the Pleistocene and Holocene, the evidence indicates that early humans lived as relatively peaceful hunter-gathers for some 7,000 generations, from the emergence of Homo sapiens up until the invention of agriculture. Therefore there is a major gap between the purported violence of the chimp-like ancestors and the documented violence of post-Neolithic humanity.
Originality/value
This is a critical analysis of published claims by authors who contend that ancient and recent hunter-gatherers typically committed high levels of violent acts. It reveals a number of serious flaws in their arguments and use of data.
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Jodie Ferguson, Brian Brown and D. Eric Boyd
The purpose of this paper is to consider corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) within the supply chain. The discussion focuses on the social component of social responsibility…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to consider corporate social irresponsibility (CSI) within the supply chain. The discussion focuses on the social component of social responsibility and explores its effects on end-users. Moreover, this paper presents moral intensity, a construct introduced in the ethics literature, as a potential guide to managers who struggle to navigate the gray area between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and CSI.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conceptualizes CSI within the supply chain and offers a framework and propositions for understanding and preventing irresponsible behavior from a moral intensity perspective.
Findings
The moral intensity framework provides a normative approach with the potential to guide managers who face choices involving decisions that might lead to irresponsible behavior in interorganizational settings.
Originality/value
This paper draws attention to business-to-business CSI and the limited research that focuses on the social aspects of CSR, rather than the environmental and economic factors emphasized in prior research. It also introduces the moral intensity framework to the supply chain literature and highlights the end-user’s (i.e. consumer’s) role in influencing the performance of the overall value chain.
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Steven Dellaportas, Jonathan Langton and Brian West
The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of senior accounting officers on governance, performance and accountability issues in the charity sector.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the perceptions of senior accounting officers on governance, performance and accountability issues in the charity sector.
Design/methodology/approach
The empirical data presented in this paper were collected via a mail‐out survey to Chief Financial Officers (CFO) of large charity organisations in Australia.
Findings
The executives surveyed agreed that the public is entitled to receive high quality financial disclosures from charities, favouring “programme accountability”, “fiscal accountability” and “profit” as relevant performance indicators rather than cash surplus/deficit. The respondents also considered that charities warrant a dedicated accounting standard but were less enthusiastic about an independent regulator with stronger control functions.
Research limitations/implications
The data in this study report the opinions of financial executives which may not represent the view of all managing executives.
Originality/value
While governance in charities has been examined previously from an organisational or management perspective, this is one of the few papers that emphasises how members of the accounting profession view this important topic.
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Brian Ferguson, Peter Kelly, Amanda Georgiou, George Barnes, Barbara Sutherland and Bill Woodbridge
Aims to assess retrospectively the payback from NHS reactive research programmes in the Northern and Yorkshire region. A questionnaire was sent to all recipients of regional…
Abstract
Aims to assess retrospectively the payback from NHS reactive research programmes in the Northern and Yorkshire region. A questionnaire was sent to all recipients of regional reactive research programme funding (biomedical, health services research (HSR), and primary and community care programmes) between 1 April 1991 and 31 March 1996. The sample available for analysis involved 174 respondents covering 119 projects, with a total financial value of £2.2 million. The main outcome measures used were peer‐reviewed publications, changes in individual practice, changes in NHS service delivery and organisation, and impact on the careers of researchers. Overall, 119 projects produced 230 peer‐reviewed publications: this was achieved at an average cost of £10,673, £6,386 and £22,310 per publication for the biomedical, HSR, and primary and community care programmes respectively. From the qualitative data analysis, important changes in individual practice and NHS service delivery were identified by respondents. The researchers in our sample appeared to have attracted over £6 million in R&D funding related to the initial regional grant. Although based on self‐report, there is evidence to suggest that the return on investment from NHS R&D can be substantial, taking a broad view of benefits to the NHS and to researchers. The findings also confirm the need for more effective dissemination and implementation of research findings.
In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992…
Abstract
In this paper, I demonstrate an alternative explanation to the development of the American electricity industry. I propose a social embeddedness approach (Granovetter, 1985, 1992) to interpret why the American electricity industry appears the way it does today, and start by addressing the following questions: Why is the generating dynamo located in well‐connected central stations rather than in isolated stations? Why does not every manufacturing firm, hospital, school, or even household operate its own generating equipment? Why do we use incandescent lamps rather than arc lamps or gas lamps for lighting? At the end of the nineteenth century, the first era of the electricity industry, all these technical as well as organizational forms were indeed possible alternatives. The centralized systems we see today comprise integrated, urban, central station firms which produce and sell electricity to users within a monopolized territory. Yet there were visions of a more decentralized electricity industry. For instance, a geographically decentralized system might have dispersed small systems based around an isolated or neighborhood generating dynamo; or a functionally decentralized system which included firms solely generating and transmitting the power, and selling the power to locally‐owned distribution firms (McGuire, Granovetter, and Schwartz, forthcoming). Similarly, the incandescent lamp was not the only illuminating device available at that time. The arc lamp was more suitable for large‐space lighting than incandescent lamps; and the second‐generation gas lamp ‐ Welsbach mantle lamp ‐ was much cheaper than the incandescent electric light and nearly as good in quality (Passer, 1953:196–197).