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Available. Open Access. Open Access
Article
Publication date: 8 August 2024

Angelo Rosa, Nicola Capolupo, Emilia Romeo, Olivia McDermott, Jiju Antony, Michael Sony and Shreeranga Bhat

This study aims to fully assess the readiness for Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Quality Performance Improvement (QPI) in an Italian Public Healthcare ecosystem.

532

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to fully assess the readiness for Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and Quality Performance Improvement (QPI) in an Italian Public Healthcare ecosystem.

Design/methodology/approach

Drawing from previously established survey development and adaptation protocols, a replication study was carried out; Lean, Six Sigma and QPI were extracted and validated through confirmatory factor analysis in an Italian Public Healthcare setting, with a sample of health professionals from the Campania region.

Findings

This study reports the adaptation of an existing scale for measuring LSS and QPI in an Italian public healthcare organisation. This analysis extracts six conceptual domains and constitutes an original adaptation of an existing scale to assess the readiness to adopt Lean, Six Sigma and Quality Performance in Italian Public Health Organizations. The constructs show strong levels of internal consistency, as demonstrated by each item factor loading and each subscale reliability.

Practical implications

Managers, policymakers and academics can employ the proposed tool to assess the public healthcare ecosystem’s capability to implement LSS initiatives and strategies to improve quality performance.

Originality/value

This is one of the first studies to assess cross-regional organisational readiness for LSS and QPI in an Italian Public Healthcare environment at this scope and level.

Details

The TQM Journal, vol. 36 no. 9
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1754-2731

Keywords

Available. Open Access. Open Access
Article
Publication date: 5 October 2023

Maria Vincenza Ciasullo, Alexander Douglas, Emilia Romeo and Nicola Capolupo

Lean Six Sigma in public and private healthcare organisations has received considerable attention over the last decade. Nevertheless, such process improvement methodologies are…

2568

Abstract

Purpose

Lean Six Sigma in public and private healthcare organisations has received considerable attention over the last decade. Nevertheless, such process improvement methodologies are not generalizable, and their effective implementation relies on contextual variables. The purpose of this study is to explore the readiness of Italian hospitals for Lean Six Sigma and Quality Performance Improvement (LSS&QPI), with a focus on gender differences.

Design/methodology/approach

A survey comprising 441 healthcare professionals from public and private hospitals was conducted. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to determine the mean scores on the LSS&QPI dimensions based on hospital type, gender and their interaction.

Findings

The results showed that public healthcare professional are more aware of quality performance improvement initiatives than private healthcare professionals. Moreover, gender differences emerged according to the type of hospital, with higher awareness for men than women in public hospitals, whereas for private hospitals the opposite was true.

Research limitations/implications

This study contributes to the Lean Six Sigma literature by focusing on the holistic assessment of LSS&QPI implementation.

Practical implications

This study informs healthcare managers about the revolution within healthcare organisations, especially public ones. Healthcare managers should spend time understanding Lean Six Sigma as a strategic orientation to promote the “lean hospital”, improving processes and fostering patient-centredness.

Originality/value

This is a preliminary study focussing on analysing inter-relationship between perceived importance of soft readiness factors such as gender dynamics as a missing jigsaw in the current literature. In addition, the research advances a holistic assessment of LSS&QPI, which sets it apart from the studies on single initiatives that have been documented to date.

Details

International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, vol. 41 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0265-671X

Keywords

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Book part
Publication date: 11 August 2014

Anna Fyrberg-Yngfalk, Bernard Cova, Stefano Pace and Per Skålén

Confessions are said to be important for members’ tribal experiences and they are usually ascribed religious meanings in existing research on consumer tribes. This suggests that…

Abstract

Purpose

Confessions are said to be important for members’ tribal experiences and they are usually ascribed religious meanings in existing research on consumer tribes. This suggests that confessions have a regulative role for tribal life. By employing the Foucauldian notion of pastoral power, the present study explores confession practices and examines how control is manifested.

Methodology

The study is based on a netnographic study and analysis of tribal members’ confessions across three online consumer tribes devoted to opera (Loggionisti, who are opera aficionados of the La Scala theatre in Milan, Italy), sports (football and hockey fans of Djurgården, Sweden), and cars (Alfa Romeo owners).

Findings

We demonstrate how confessions align consumers with the common tribe ethos and how this constitutes members into various subject positions, which are fundamental social processes for reinforcing the tribe. More specifically, it demonstrates four types of subject positions: the ‘pastor’, ‘regular sheep’, ‘good sheep’ and ‘black sheep’, and how these subject positions regulate the actions of tribe members.

Research implications

The present study theorizes how control is manifested and facilitated in consumer tribes. The study also explicates the confession and its role as a religious regulating practice fundamental for the life of a consumer tribe.

Practical implications

Community managers can recognize the different subject positions that emerge within a community and help facilitate the interactions among community members.

Originality/value of chapter

Previous studies are silent about how confessions reproduce control in consumer tribes. The present study highlights confession practices and the constitution of subject positions, which regulate as well as reinforce consumer tribes.

Details

Consumer Culture Theory
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-811-2

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Article
Publication date: 1 June 1974

Harry C. Bauer

A MAN'S LAST WORDS carry presumption of credibility not associated with utterances made earlier in life. William Shakespeare acknowledged this credibility in at least three of his…

98

Abstract

A MAN'S LAST WORDS carry presumption of credibility not associated with utterances made earlier in life. William Shakespeare acknowledged this credibility in at least three of his plays. When the physician, Cornelius, told Cymbeline that the Queen had confessed that she loved him not, Cymbeline declared, ‘She alone knew this;/And, but she spoke it dying, I would not/Believe her lips in opening it.’

Details

Library Review, vol. 24 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0024-2535

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Book part
Publication date: 25 January 2012

Carlo Ciccarelli and Stefano Fenoaltea

This paper presents the first annual estimates for the rail-guided vehicles industry in post-Unification Italy. Nationally, maintenance was naturally trend-dominated, while new…

Abstract

This paper presents the first annual estimates for the rail-guided vehicles industry in post-Unification Italy. Nationally, maintenance was naturally trend-dominated, while new construction followed a Kuznets cycle; overall, maintenance exceeded new construction, while freight cars represented the largest component of the latter. The limited production of locomotives over the initial decades seems tied to high raw material costs rather than to technical inadequacy. Regionally, new construction was concentrated in the industrial triangle, and in Campania; maintenance was more widely diffused, as repair work tended to follow local traffic, but it too was largely absent from the swath of mostly Southern regions without major urban centers.

Details

Research in Economic History
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-246-3

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Abstract

Details

Freight Transport Modelling
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-286-8

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Book part
Publication date: 1 November 2008

Carlo Ciccarelli and Stefano Fenoaltea

This article presents estimates of social-overhead construction in Italy's regions. The new-construction series point to a largely common cycle in non-railway work, and largely…

Abstract

This article presents estimates of social-overhead construction in Italy's regions. The new-construction series point to a largely common cycle in non-railway work, and largely idiosyncratic bursts of railway building. Maintenance doubles as an index of the underlying stock, which cannot be calculated from the flows alone; one finds limited convergence, and only in railway infrastructure. Industrial and overall growth are increasingly correlated both with the initial stock, and with its increment. Direct measures of welfare improvements are uncertain, but the relative increases in draftees’ mean heights correlate in particular with social-overhead investment.

Details

Research in Economic History
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-337-8

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Article
Publication date: 19 November 2019

Carlo Cafiero, Monica Palladino, Claudio Marcianò and Giuseppa Romeo

This paper aims to provide evidence on the extent to which traditional agri-food products (TFPs) constitute a leverage to promote tourism in the province of Reggio Calabria…

487

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to provide evidence on the extent to which traditional agri-food products (TFPs) constitute a leverage to promote tourism in the province of Reggio Calabria, Italy, and discuss ways in which community-led local development governance institutions might enhance it.

Design/methodology/approach

The study is based on a review of existing information on Calabrian TFPs to classify them by area of production and identify those that are specific or relatively small areas, in addition to a qualitative analysis of the content of the texts of a sample of websites promoting tourism in the region.

Findings

Though food is one of the leverages used to promote tourism in Calabria, TFPs are not yet sufficiently exploited to attract tourists to the province of Reggio Calabria, in spite of their potential as a vital expression of local culture and traditions.

Research limitations/implications

The selection of the websites used in the study may not be exhaustive of the full spectrum of Web-based promotion of tourism in Calabria.

Practical implications

The results provide useful insights to public and private institutions responsible for rural development and tourism promotion in Calabria. The database on the TFPs of the province of Reggio Calabria permits an easy reading of the geographical distribution of the different categories of products, useful as a resource for further studies and as a local development policy support tool.

Social implications

Promoting a form of culturally sensitive, food-based tourism in the interior areas of Calabria may constitute an important factor to revert the trend towards impoverishment, migration of young people and depopulation of the interior areas of Calabria. This is a particularly sensitive issue in Italy today, in view of the difficulties that other strategies pursued in the area are facing.

Originality/value

Existing literature on typical food products in Italy focuses on those labelled by denomination of origin and geographic protection. This is one of the first papers focusing on TFPs labelled as Prodotti agroalimentari tradizionali in the Italian legislation. By exploring the role of local food and traditions in promoting tourism, this paper expands the scope of existing studies of rural tourism and on rural development in Calabria, and beyond.

Details

Journal of Place Management and Development, vol. 13 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8335

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 23 June 2014

Vladimir M. Moskovkin, Emilia A. Bocharova and Oksana V. Balashova

– The purpose of this paper is to introduce and develop the methodology of journal benchmarking.

449

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and develop the methodology of journal benchmarking.

Design/methodology/approach

The journal benchmarking method is understood to be an analytic procedure of continuous monitoring and comparing of the advance of specific journal(s) against that of competing journals in the same subject area, together with the application of best practices defined in order to improve a journal's own advance and gain a position among leading scientific journals.

Findings

As a realization of this method, it is suggested to build up a journal scoreboard, which is a matrix of journal indicators, distributed for different journals. For the journal scoreboard on the subject of lasers and optics (36 journals, five indicators) a series of regression equations was built up that allow forecasts to be made for journals’ impact factor levels, depending on the International Collaboration and Reference per Document indicators included in the SCIMAGO database.

Practical implications

The detailed journal scoreboard and prediction calculations allow elaborating strategies and policies for the promotion of journals in the Web of Science and Scopus databases.

Originality/value

The research presents the building up of a journal scoreboard in combination with prediction calculations that can be helpful for improving journal positioning in international Scientometric databases.

Details

Campus-Wide Information Systems, vol. 31 no. 2/3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1065-0741

Keywords

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Article
Publication date: 5 September 2016

Veronica Gabrielli and Ilaria Baghi

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of a shift in brand architecture strategy on corporate brand equity. The change is from a house of brands to a branded house…

2706

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of a shift in brand architecture strategy on corporate brand equity. The change is from a house of brands to a branded house approach in which the corporate brand is prominent. The study proposes two alternative approaches in order to explore how consumers build the corporate brand equity from single product brand equities in the portfolio: the dilution process or the bookkeeping/subtyping cognitive process.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected through a questionnaire administered to 150 Italian consumers. All the items were related to a real corporate brand – Procter & Gamble (P&G) – and to seven of the product brands in its portfolio. The choice of the Italian context and the P&G brand was motivated by the fact that P&G has recently adopted a shift in its brand strategy, starting to give prominence to the corporate brand in its communication campaign in Italy.

Findings

The dilution process does not describe the effect of a change in strategy on corporate brand equity, but the bookkeeping/subtyping cognitive process does. This suggests that consumers tend not to revise corporate brand equity when they perceive many product brands behind it.

Originality/value

The value of the present paper is to deal with a relevant and current topic: the brand architecture dynamism. This research is an exploratory step to satisfy the need for theory-based research on consumer responses to the shift in the brand portfolio architecture strategy.

Details

Marketing Intelligence & Planning, vol. 34 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-4503

Keywords

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