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Article
Publication date: 9 November 2012

Petr Cernohorsky and Jan Voracek

The traditional service market is composed of customers and service providers, interacting within a given structure and following market‐specific rules. These basic attributes are

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Abstract

Purpose

The traditional service market is composed of customers and service providers, interacting within a given structure and following market‐specific rules. These basic attributes are obvious and persistent. The fragile entity, which is essential for normally operating and self‐controlling market, is information. In this context the aim is to distinguish between a background noise, arising from comprehensive marketing campaigns, customer care activities or advertisement and data, advices or knowledge, necessary for any focused business decision. The straightforward example of prospective market suffering from information shortage is healthcare. For a normal patient it is almost impossible to select purposely a better doctor, hospital or therapy. Even providers of care are not always sure about the exact diagnosis, resulting in the extended length of patient's stay and its related costs.

Design/methodology/approach

From the knowledge engineering point of view, the national market of healthcare services is a platform where distributed micro behavior of patients interacts with centralized, systemic activities of medical care and insurance providers under the umbrella of governmental rules. Owing to the problem complexity, a significant portion of included subjectivity and natural heterogeneity of available knowledge, the authors have adopted a combined modeling platform as the most natural way of its formalization and processing. Typical groups of patients are represented as multi‐state agents, adjusting reactions and preferences quickly in accordance with time, changing environment and quality of accessible information. Hospitals, on the contrary, are considered as system dynamic enterprises with domain‐tailored processes both on operational and managerial levels.

Findings

The first interesting outcome is the clear experimental evidence, justifying the impossibility of purely market‐driven control and development of a national healthcare system. Furthermore, the paper presents a novelty heterogeneous model as a viable tool for analysis of emergent market behavior enabling evaluation of different public health policies.

Practical implications

The developed model can serve both policy makers and hospital managers. To the former it can experimentally help to investigate the influence of parametric changes of overall market regulations. The latter can benefit especially from optimization of internal processes, leading both to performance and competitive advantage improvements. Moreover, due to its transparency and interactivity, the method of heterogeneous modeling is ideal for strategic planning, group decision making, capturing and sharing of organizational knowledge or organizational learning. Finally, the implementation flexibility and architectural scalability predetermines combined modeling as a convenient technique for rapid prototyping of complex problems.

Originality/value

This paper combines areas of health economics, enterprise management and computational economics in a challenging and innovative way. The value of the proposed research methods relies on the application of a heterogeneous paradigm in multiple perspectives – not only by combining the agent‐based models with system dynamics approach, but also by combining and evaluating alternative approaches to representing agents' state and knowledge.

Details

Measuring Business Excellence, vol. 16 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1368-3047

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Article
Publication date: 9 November 2012

Antonio Lerro

This editorial of the special issue of Measuring Business Excellence is devoted to introduce and discuss a knowledge‐based perspective of innovation and performance improvement in

1353

Abstract

Purpose

This editorial of the special issue of Measuring Business Excellence is devoted to introduce and discuss a knowledge‐based perspective of innovation and performance improvement in health care (HC).

Design/methodology/approach

The approaches, evidences and insights discussed in this introduction are based on the discussion of the topics of the conference “International Forum on Knowledge Assets Dynamics” organised in June 2012 in Matera, Italy. After a brief analysis of the importance of the HC for research and practice related to the reform of HC sector that encompassed most OECD countries in the last 15 years and the diffusion of the new public management philosophy, the article presents a rationale explaining the roots and the meanings of a knowledge‐based perspective of innovation and performance improvement in HC. The model of the innovation cycle is introduced and discussed. Finally, the article provides an overview of the papers of the special issue.

Findings

At the conference, leading experts discussed the importance of identifying and managing new key‐value drivers in order to face emergent competitive scenarios, and research and management practices for addressing complexity, uncertainty and changes of today's business landscape. This article as well as all the contributions to the special issue provide useful implications both for research and practice. In particular they support the analysis about the resources, the assets, the processes, the factors and the contingency conditions playing a role in determining the improvement of the innovative capacity and consequently the global performance of the HC organisations.

Originality/value

This article – and the contributions to the special issue – deal with different aspects which are important in the discussion about how fostering innovation and performance improvement in HC organisations exploiting knowledge‐based factors. The articles also deal with the approaches, tools, methods and techniques that disentangle the mechanisms by which different knowledge‐based factors, separately or interdependently, contribute to improve HC organisations' innovation dynamics and organisational performance.

Details

Measuring Business Excellence, vol. 16 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1368-3047

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Book part
Publication date: 8 April 2024

Jan Černohorský, Liběna Černohorská and Petr Teplý

The aim of this chapter is to describe the purpose of the introduction of the exchange rate commitment by the Czech National Bank (CNB) in the period from November 2013 to April…

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to describe the purpose of the introduction of the exchange rate commitment by the Czech National Bank (CNB) in the period from November 2013 to April 2017 and its effects on the real economy. The main reason for introducing the exchange rate commitment was concern about the possibility of a prolonged deflationary period in Czechia. Given that the standard monetary policy instruments had already been exhausted on easing the monetary policy conditions, the CNB Bank Board opted for an exchange rate commitment. The secondary objective of the exchange rate commitment was to boost the economy through the positive effect of a weaker koruna on exports. Next, we focus in more detail on the effect of the exchange rate commitment in the economy and the course of the foreign exchange interventions. Overall, we can summarize that the CNB's foreign exchange interventions were an extraordinary monetary policy instrument – in a market economy with inflation targeting and a flexible exchange rate – used in extraordinary times.

Details

Modeling Economic Growth in Contemporary Czechia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-841-6

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Book part
Publication date: 8 April 2024

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Abstract

Details

Modeling Economic Growth in Contemporary Czechia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83753-841-6

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