The purpose of this paper is to present a process architecture pattern for designing particular components of a complex service. The proposal emphasizes the design of the service…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a process architecture pattern for designing particular components of a complex service. The proposal emphasizes the design of the service production flow component, following modularity ideas, which determines the sequence of actions needed to generate a high quality and efficient service. The authors report its applications to the design of the flow in a single emergency department (ED) case.
Design/methodology/approach
In complex services, production design is usually lacking because production activities are not clearly defined and, in many cases, they are dynamically determined as the service is produced according a client’s particular needs. In health services, for example ED, this generates a chaotic production flow that uses resources very inefficiently. The methodology uses a reference architecture, integrating it with disciplines – modularity, analytics and evaluation methods – that provide ideas for formally designing these complex services. This is mainly justified by the fact that, in many such services, no formal design exits and their production processes are the result of practice evolution.
Findings
Methodology was applied to the ED of a large public hospital. The authors first analyzed ED’s production and performance data. The authors found two patients’ groups that used more than 90 percent of resources. Therefore, design focused on these groups, defining specialized production lines for them and with physical space remodeled by an architecture project, resulting in well-defined separated workflows for each production line. Design also includes coordination with complementary shared services, including specialists consultations’ requests and execution, and request, processing and reception of laboratory and radiology examinations. The authors implemented new workflows producing a decrease of 26 percent in patients’ delays. More detailed results based on three months of observations also showed, for example, a reduction in examinations waiting times of 80 percent and an increase in the consultation resolution for cardiological patients from 24 to 80 percent in the same day, which means a significant quality increment.
Research limitations/implications
Thus, the authors conclude the plausibility of the idea they proposed that an important design problem in health services, in terms of potential improvements in capacity utilization, is production design. This provides the opportunity to reduce investing large amounts of resources in new hospitals and to instead use the alternative to generate large amounts of capacity by production performance improvements.
Practical implications
The authors are replicating the approach in other hospitals with extensions to inpatient and ambulatory services.
Social implications
Approach produces better service in public hospitals, which is a problem in emergencies in the world.
Originality/value
Formal design approach in health production services is proposed that provides great value by generating capacity, due to better use of resources, that reduces investment needs in new facilities.
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Oscar Barros and Cristian Julio
The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to support business process architecture and business process design, and present an application to the domain of public hospitals…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a method to support business process architecture and business process design, and present an application to the domain of public hospitals in Chile.
Design/methodology/approach
This method is based on the formalization of generic architectures and their internal process structure, proposed in this work as architecture and process patterns, which have been developed at the Master in Business Engineering of the University of Chile and validated empirically in hundreds of Chilean firms from different industries.
Findings
The authors have found that the use of architecture and process patterns accelerates the design of such structures until the last level of detail, providing a good and timely basis for information system design and, in particular, were able to develop comprehensive generic process architecture for public hospitals in two months.
Originality/value
The authors' approach considers explicitly the relationships among the architecture elements and process components, providing a systemic view of the business structure and ensuring the alignment between its elements.
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To develop a novel approach for encapsulating high level business knowledge and logic of a given application domain in patterns and frameworks, which can be reused and be applied…
Abstract
Purpose
To develop a novel approach for encapsulating high level business knowledge and logic of a given application domain in patterns and frameworks, which can be reused and be applied to improve a process for a given business in the domain and to develop an application to support such process.
Design/methodology/approach
Formal and explicit business process patterns (BPP) have been developed that synthesize best practices found in hundreds of real projects of process redesign. From these, software business objects (BO) frameworks that encapsulate business logic have been derived.
Findings
Good characterization of the processes and associated decisions by means of formal BPP allows including complex generalized business decisions logic in BO frameworks. Such logic is built upon the best current knowledge of analytical methods, such as business intelligence, optimization and heuristics.
Practical implications
This approach provides a very flexible way, based on reusable components, to develop solutions and software for complex business decisions, which is an alternative to packaged products. The approach is exemplified by using a specific application domain and applied to a real case in the domain.
Originality/value
As it is shown in the literature review in the paper, patterns and frameworks up to now have only marginally included high‐level decision logic.
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Saraswata Chaudhuri, Eric Renault and Oscar Wahlstrom
The authors discuss the econometric underpinnings of Barro (2006)'s defense of the rare disaster model as a way to bring back an asset pricing model “into the right ballpark for…
Abstract
The authors discuss the econometric underpinnings of Barro (2006)'s defense of the rare disaster model as a way to bring back an asset pricing model “into the right ballpark for explaining the equity-premium and related asset-market puzzles.” Arbitrarily low-probability economic disasters can restore the validity of model-implied moment conditions only if the amplitude of disasters may be arbitrary large in due proportion. The authors prove an impossibility theorem that in case of potentially unbounded disasters, there is no such thing as a population empirical likelihood (EL)-based model-implied probability distribution. That is, one cannot identify some belief distortions for which the EL-based implied probabilities in sample, as computed by Julliard and Ghosh (2012), could be a consistent estimator. This may lead to consider alternative statistical discrepancy measures to avoid the problem with EL. Indeed, the authors prove that, under sufficient integrability conditions, power divergence Cressie-Read measures with positive power coefficients properly define a unique population model-implied probability measure. However, when this computation is useful because the reference asset pricing model is misspecified, each power divergence will deliver different model-implied beliefs distortion. One way to provide economic underpinnings to the choice of a particular belief distortion is to see it as the endogenous result of investor's choice when optimizing a recursive multiple-priors utility a la Chen and Epstein (2002). Jeong et al. (2015)'s econometric study confirms that this way of accommodating ambiguity aversion may help to address the Equity Premium puzzle.
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Justo de Jorge Moreno and Oscar Rojas Carrasco
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the competitive position of the company Inditex in the period 1990-2013 as a case study, identified by academics and professionals as a…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the competitive position of the company Inditex in the period 1990-2013 as a case study, identified by academics and professionals as a successful company. The analysis has focussed on the comparison of Inditex with its competitive environment.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodology used to achieve the objectives was: data envelopment analysis for the analysis of efficiency and for the second the Tobit regression to determine the factors explaining efficiency. The authors have used additional methodologies such as social networks or cluster analysis.
Findings
The individual company analysis reveals that the average efficiency level by years for the period 1990-2013, is relatively high 88.8 percent. The determinants of efficiency have been; the resources of the company in terms of assets whose relationship with is U-shaped curvilinear, where the minimum value (trend change) is produced between years 2002 and 2003. The degree of internationalization of the firm, is positively related to efficiency. As the company increases its expansion, experience and skills, increases efficiency. Finally, the effect of liberalization of textile trade in 2005 had no influence on the efficiency levels.
Research limitations/implications
The limitations involving the methodology, in terms of representativeness, possible generalizations and type of secondary information used, can be offset by the ability to provide good vision and establish alternatives for possible studies.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to the fast-fashion retail industry literature by emphasizing the importance of the case study.
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The purpose of this paper is to offer the author’s view about the conceptualization of scholarly impact, and some of the challenges young Iberoamerican scholars face to have an…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to offer the author’s view about the conceptualization of scholarly impact, and some of the challenges young Iberoamerican scholars face to have an impact.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a personal account based on previous theory and the author’s personal experience.
Findings
The paper presents a short critique of the conceptualization and measurement of scholarly impact, and introduces dimensions and challenges of being a scholar in Iberoamerica.
Originality/value
The paper offers an analytical perspective of scholarly impact in Iberoamerica and offers some insights to help overcome different challenges.
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Gabriela Carmen Pascariu and Ramona Ţigănaşu
The unequal distribution of economic activities, transposed in economic, social and territorial disparities is the general characteristic of the European economy. Gaps increased…
Abstract
The unequal distribution of economic activities, transposed in economic, social and territorial disparities is the general characteristic of the European economy. Gaps increased in the context of European Union (EU) enlargement towards Eastern and Central Europe and of the economic crisis, thus bringing new differentiations among member states’ economies. The main aim of the chapter is to emphasise the centre-periphery differentiations in the European economy, by using a composite index of peripherality, in order to better understand the determinants of growth and convergence in Central and Eastern European countries and to reach normative conclusions for increasing Cohesion Policy (CP) effectiveness. The first part of the chapter provides a short overview of the main theories and models of the peripherality analysis and the relationships between the centre and the periphery, in order to find out how this analysis relates to the research in the field. The second part provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of European economies during 2003–2014, in order to find out whether the EU enlargement process stabilised the EU core-periphery pattern or, on the contrary, the process of core-periphery structural convergence occurred. The third part includes the suggested model of analysis (methodology, data, and main results) from a multidisciplinary perspective, underlining the centre-periphery differentiations on the two axes, North–South and West–East. The results have been interpreted in conclusions, with a focus on their relevance for the European CP challenges.
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Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are…
Abstract
Communications regarding this column should be addressed to Mrs. Cheney, Peabody Library School, Nashville, Term. 37203. Mrs. Cheney does not sell the books listed here. They are available through normal trade sources. Mrs. Cheney, being a member of the editorial board of Pierian Press, will not review Pierian Press reference books in this column. Descriptions of Pierian Press reference books will be included elsewhere in this publication.
Ana João Santos, Baltazar Nunes, Irina Kislaya, Ana Paula Gil and Oscar Ribeiro
Psychological elder abuse (PEA) assessment is described with different thresholds. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the prevalence of PEA and the phenomenon’s…
Abstract
Purpose
Psychological elder abuse (PEA) assessment is described with different thresholds. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the prevalence of PEA and the phenomenon’s characterisation varied using two different thresholds.
Design/methodology/approach
Participants from the cross-sectional population-based study, Aging and Violence (n=1,123), answered three questions regarding PEA. The less strict measure considered PEA as a positive response to any of the three evaluated behaviours. The stricter measure comprised the occurrence, for more than ten times, of one or more behaviours. A multinomial regression compared cases from the two measures with non-victims.
Findings
Results show different prevalence rates and identified perpetrators. The two most prevalent behaviours (ignoring/refusing to speak and verbal aggression) occurred more frequently (>10 times). Prevalence nearly tripled for “threatening” from the stricter measure (>10 times) to the less strict (one to ten times). More similarities, rather than differences, were found between cases of the two measures. The cohabiting variable differentiated the PEA cases from the two measures; victims reporting abuse >10 times were more likely to be living with a spouse or with a spouse and children.
Research limitations/implications
Development of a valid and reliable measure for PEA that includes different ranges is needed.
Originality/value
The study exemplifies how operational definitions can impact empirical evidence and the need for researchers to analyse the effect of the definitional criteria on their outcomes, since dichotomization between victim and non-victim affects the phenomenon characterisation.
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Remedios Hernández-Linares, Vanessa Diaz-Moriana and Valeriano Sanchez-Famoso
It has long been known that family firms have a high mortality rate and that increasing these firms' survival rate is one of the most difficult challenges faced by both public…
Abstract
It has long been known that family firms have a high mortality rate and that increasing these firms' survival rate is one of the most difficult challenges faced by both public policies and scholars. While most policies and researchers have focused on the business side, in recent years, more attention has been paid to the family sphere. This chapter goes one step further by not focusing on one side or another of this binomial, but on the relationship between both. In particular, we analyze the paradoxes emerging between the different inter- and intragenerational dyads that coexist in family firms (mother-daughter, father-son, mother-son, father-daughter, brother-sister, wife-husband, etc.) to open new lines of debate and propose new basis for the establishment of family firms-targeted public politics. We propose policies that will help family decision-makers to manage unique paradoxes that characterize family businesses.