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To a rapidly changing environment, health‐care organizations are adopting a variety of value enhancement strategies. Typically characterized as quality improvement activities, these strategies generally include efforts to improve: clinical effectiveness; financial performance; consumer satisfaction; employee satisfaction; and risk management/quality assurance activities. Early efforts involved the use of continuous quality improvement (CQI) or total quality management (TQM) strategies with a focus on improving financial performance, while clinical effectiveness has been a greater emphasis more recently. This study examines the manner in which 14 US health‐care systems, noted for innovation in quality improvement and value enhancement, are utilizing these activities to promote productive organizational change. An interview format, for use with key informants in each organization, was developed using a model with four dimensions – strategic, cultural, technical, and structural.

A comprehensive operational framework is proposed to explain young consumers’ (i.e. generations Y and Z) engagement with brands on social media sites (SMSs). This paper aims to synthesize two motivational theories: uses and gratifications (U&G) theory and the technology acceptance model (TAM).

A selective literature review was conducted to examine recent publications related to young consumers’ brand-driven engagement behavior on SMSs in which either TAM or U&G theory was applied. A three-stage method was used: an initial search was followed by vertical and horizontal searches and then a targeted search of scholarly publications. At each stage, the university’s library databases and Google Scholar were searched for relevant, mainly peer-reviewed articles, using appropriate filters and keywords. The articles’ references and the studies that cited those articles were added to the initially identified research pool (vertical search), coupled with publications of a similar nature based on keywords (horizontal search). The final stage, the targeted search, involved identifying and adding specific articles (e.g. literature reviews and integrated models).

After a review of a significant number of U&G and TAM studies, similarities and differences of the two theories were identified, and an integrated operational framework was developed. Based on empirical findings of existing U&G and TAM studies, testable propositions were presented.

The proposed hybrid model and the associated propositions provide a research opportunity to empirically examine how young consumers’ motivational (i.e. motivating and demotivating) drivers, normative influence, perceived value and attitudes (toward brand content and engagement) predict intention or actual brand-related behavior on SMSs.

Much of current research indicates that generations Y and Z (“digital natives”) spend considerably more time on SMSs than any of the older generations (“digital immigrants”). Thus, brands that aim to target this cohort need to develop successful engagement strategies (e.g. gamification and influencer marketing) on current and emerging SMSs. The suggested conceptualization provides guidelines for companies to effectively use such communication strategies to motivate young people to engage with their brands on sites such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

A review of TAM research indicates that it lacks rich motivating/demotivating constructs, and thus borrows from other theories to complement this weakness. An examination of U&G frameworks, particularity Ducoffe (1996)-based models, indicates that these frameworks mainly test engagement with social media advertising but seldom other types of brand-driven engagement on SMSs. In addition, many U&G studies focus less than TAM studies do on outcome variables such as behavioral intentions and behavior. Thus, the authors propose a synthesized U&G and TAM framework that mitigates both theories’ weaknesses and builds on their strengths, enriching the growing research on brand-driven engagement behavior via SMSs.

This paper aims to test if team reflexivity is a countermeasure to the detrimental effect of team virtuality on team performance improvement, in decision-making teams.

Study 1 regarded 210 individuals (N = 44 teams) executing five decision-making tasks. Study 2 regarded 60 individuals (N = 20 teams) executing four decision-making tasks. Study 1 was longitudinal, with no experimental manipulation. Study 2 had an experimental longitudinal design comprising two between-team manipulations: medium of communication and team reflexivity; the outcome was team performance improvement.

Study 1’s results show that team reflexivity positively moderates the effect of virtuality on team performance improvement over time. Study 2’s results shows that a reflexivity manipulation benefits face-to-face teams more so than virtual teams, probably because team reflexivity is more effective when media richness is high.

The implications of reflexivity’s lack of effect in low virtuality (Study 1) and high virtuality (Study 2) teams are discussed. This study contributes to the team learning and virtual teams’ literatures by expanding current knowledge on how team reflexivity can facilitate team learning under face-to-face versus virtual communication conditions.

This study aims to understand how mode of delivery, online versus face-to-face, affects comprehension when teaching operations management concepts via a simulation. Conceptually, the aim is to identify factors that influence the students’ ability to learn and retain new concepts.

Leveraging Littlefield Technologies’ simulation, the study investigates how team interaction, team leadership, instructor’s guidance, simulation’s ease of use and previous software experience affects comprehension for both online and face-to-face teaching environments. Survey data were gathered from 514 undergraduate students. The data were then analyzed using structural equation modeling.

For the face-to-face population, this study found that team interaction, previous software experience, instructor’s guidance and simulation’s ease of use affected student comprehension. This differed from the online population who were only affected by the simulation’s ease of use and instructor’s guidance.

Understanding how the mode of delivery affects comprehension is important as educators develop new online teaching techniques and experiment with innovative technologies like simulation. As demand for online education grows, many instructors find they need to refine their methods to ensure students comprehend the concepts being taught regardless of modality.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the roles of social values in the reform of coverage decisions for Thailand's Universal Health Coverage (UC) plan in 2009 and 2010.

Qualitative techniques, including document review and personal communication, were employed for data collection and triangulation. All relevant data and information regarding the reform and three case study interventions were interpreted and analysed according to the thematic elements in the conceptual framework.

Social values determined changes in the UC plan in two steps: the development of coverage decision guidelines and the introduction of such guidelines in benefit package formulation. The former was guided by process values, while the latter was shaped by different content ideals of stakeholders and policymakers. Analysis of the three interventions suggests that in allocating its resources to subsidise particular services, the UC authority took into account not only cost‐effectiveness, but also budget impacts, equity and solidarity. These social values competed with each other and, in many instances, the prioritisation of benefit candidates was not led solely by evidence, but also by value judgments, even though transparency was recognised as an ultimate goal of reform.

The study findings indicate room for improvement and for future research – the current conceptual framework is inadequate to capture all the crucial elements which influence health prioritisation, as well as their interactions with social values.

The paper fills a gap in literature as it enhances understanding of the effects of social value judgments in real‐life health prioritisation.