Dimensions of service quality and satisfaction in healthcare: a patient’s satisfaction index

The assessment of patients’ satisfaction levels, and the knowledge of what factors influence satisfaction are very important for healthcare managers as it influences healthcare results and healthcare institutions financial results. The objective of this research is to analyse patients’ satisfaction levels in a set of four Portuguese primary Healthcare Centres, through the estimation of a satisfaction index, which simultaneously explains which dimensions of healthcare quality influence that satisfaction the most. For that, a conceptual model of patients’ satisfaction in primary healthcare was tested using data from a sample of 414 patients. Partial Least Squares path modelling (PLS) was the technique chosen to evaluate the proposed model. The results show that patients’ satisfaction is 60.887 in a scale from 1 to 100, revealing only a medium level of satisfaction. It is also possible to conclude that the most important positive effects on satisfaction are the ones linked to the patient/doctor relationship, the quality of facilities and the interaction with administrative staff, by this order.     

The Role of Stakeholders in Sustainability Reporting Assurance

The main purpose of this exploratory analysis is to understand whether, based on evidence gathered from international best practices selected among corporations which adopt the Global Reporting Initiative guidelines in sustainability reporting (SR), stakeholders are significantly consulted and involved—as international literature would indicate—by assurance providers, during assurance processes of SR. We aim at verifying if this practice—known as stakeholder assurance—is in fact widespread in SR assurance by carrying out empirical research, through content analysis, into a sample of 161 assurance statements of international corporations, in order to test characteristics of any stakeholder assurance implemented.     

Customers' cognitive patterns of assurance: a dual approach

Assurance has been identified as a key service quality dimension but has not attracted theoretical and empirical attention on a distinct basis. The present pilot study adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to look at how distinct customer groups (internal and external) perceive assurance in particular when they evaluate service quality. Evidence comes from 83 individuals of the medical staff and 79 patients at an outpatient unit. The novelty of the present study lies in the combination of means–end analysis with a probabilistic model to ground the conceptually appealing composite structure of assurance on a more concrete attribute foundation. Findings suggest that while the groups under investigation realize different benefits in achieving assurance, they share a common guide when prioritizing service-related attributes, namely the professional capacity of personnel. Overall, assurance proves itself to be critical, at least for the healthcare sector.     

Architectural hybrids for living across the lifespan: lessons from dementia

ABSTRACT

The built environment is essential for well-being at old age. The theory of salutogenesis, focusing on health, rather than the disease itself, provides evidence that space contributes to health and well-being. This has influenced healthcare architecture through facilities designed to support well-being. So, increasingly healthcare facilities aim to look like hotels to improve user experience. This retains conceptual and usage gaps between hospitality and healthcare but supports cross-fertilization of best practice. This paper explores possibilities of synergies between healthcare facilities and hospitality industry. Appropriate services and well-being across the lifespan is the ultimate objective, and the physical environment is critical in that provision. Examining the architectural typology of the dementia village as case study, it explores healthcare–hospitality hybrids. Learning from both domains can contribute to silver economy while providing the aging population with enhanced environment. Aging population and stakeholders in this ecosystem can benefit from these synergies.     

Teamwork skill assessment: Development of a measure for academia

Popular teamwork assessments have been strongly criticized on the grounds of poor psychometric properties and their disconnect with conceptual models of teamwork. These issues raise concerns with respect to our ability to evaluate efforts devoted to advancing teamwork in academia. We report the development of a teamwork assessment that builds on empirically supported conceptualizations of team processes. Two studies were conducted to test and to cross-validate the psychometrics of the resulting measure. In the discussion section, we address the implications of our findings for conceptual models of teamwork and provide guidelines for using the measure in business education.     

Assurance Services for Sustainability Reports: Standards and Empirical Evidence

This article contributes to the growing scholarship on the topic of assurance services for sustainability reports. We first synthetically illustrate the main international standards for the implementation of assurance services regarding the subject documents. The second part of our article is an empirical analysis of reports drawn up on the basis of the current Global Reporting Initiative 2006 guidelines, and looks at how effectively these standards have been implemented, analyzing the different typologies of assurance statement.     

Towards a strategic place brand-management model

Abstract

Using earlier research into models of place branding-management processes, this paper develops a multi-level conceptual model of strategic place brand management designed to support managers in embracing a holistic approach to place brand management. The model identifies the following components for attention and activity: place brand evaluation; brand infrastructure relationships, including infrastructure (regeneration) and stakeholder engagement (management); place brand articulation; and brand communications. The model identifies the influences and action processes between these components, including brand identity and architecture, influencing brand experience. Existing place branding models take different perspectives on the branding process – respectively, relationship management, communications, and strategic planning; none of these models are comprehensive and neither are they widely adopted or tested. This paper proposes an integrative model that builds on and subsumes these earlier models and is also grounded in the wider research on branding and place branding concept and processes.     

Process-Driven Data Quality Management Through Integration of Data Quality into Existing Process Models

The importance of high data quality and the need to consider data quality in the context of business processes are well acknowledged. Process modeling is mandatory for process-driven data quality management, which seeks to improve and sustain data quality by redesigning processes that create or modify data. A variety of process modeling languages exist, which organizations heterogeneously apply. The purpose of this article is to present a context-independent approach to integrate data quality into the variety of existing process models. The authors aim to improve communication of data quality issues across stakeholders while considering process model complexity. They build on a keyword-based literature review in 74 IS journals and three conferences, reviewing 1,555 articles from 1995 onwards. 26 articles, including 46 process models, were examined in detail. The literature review reveals the need for a context-independent and visible integration of data quality into process models. First, the authors present the enhancement of existing process models with data quality characteristics. Second, they present the integration of a data-quality-centric process model with existing process models. Since process models are mainly used for communicating processes, they consider the impact of integrating data quality and the application of patterns for complexity reduction on the models’ complexity metrics. There is need for further research on complexity metrics to improve the applicability of complexity reduction patterns. Lacking knowledge about interdependency between metrics and missing complexity metrics impede assessment and prediction of process model complexity and thus understandability. Finally, our context-independent approach can be used complementarily for data quality integration with specific process modeling languages.     

Coercive,normative and mimetic isomorphism as determinants of the voluntary assurance of sustainability reports

This study offers an opportunity to understand how country- and industry-specific effects may affect the decision to assure sustainability reports by identifying institutional pressures. Based on neo-institutional theory, the aim of this research is to highlight whether assurance derives from the coercive, normative and mimetic forces related to legal and cultural strength and the industry pressure for assurance, respectively. The panel data analysis of an international sample of 696 companies for the period 2007–2014 shows that voluntary assurance acts as a legitimization tool implemented by companies in response to normative, coercive and mimetic pressures; that is, companies operating in countries that have a greater legal system and cultural development, especially in industries that are greatly concerned about sustainability, are more likely to issue an assurance statement. Moreover, through a two-stage logit model, we respond to the question of which is the relevant institutional factor that causes voluntary assurance to be adopted. Specifically, we evidence that the normative factor is the one that exerts the greatest explanatory power in the assurance demand, followed by coercive pressure.     

How capital markets assess the credibility and accuracy of CSR reporting: Exploring the effects of assurance quality and CSR restatement issuance

This research examines how the credibility and accuracy of corporate social responsibility (CSR) disclosures enhance market confidence by exploring their effect on the cost of capital. How do capital markets react to higher-quality assurance of CSR reporting? Can the hypothetical reduction in the cost of capital that assurance quality produces be explained by restatements of previous information given in these CSR reports? We explore the relationship between assurance quality, as a proxy for credibility and market confidence, and the mediating effect of CSR restatements as indicators of accuracy. We propose regression models with a sample of CSR reports issued by European companies. Building upon the signalling and legitimacy theories, the results support the positive effect of higher assurance quality statements on market confidence by confirming a decrease in the cost of capital; assurance quality gives an indication of credibility to the capital market and restatements related to methodological updates signal accuracy. The reduction in the cost of capital brought on by higher assurance quality appears to be determined by the issuance of CSR restatements, which create legitimacy for both client companies and assurance providers. CSR reporting and assurance have reached a greater level of maturity as demonstrated by the evolution of these practices and financial market perceptions.     

Consumer Sovereignty in Healthcare: Fact or Fiction?

We pose the question: Is consumer sovereignty in the healthcare market fact or fiction? Consumer sovereignty in healthcare implies that society benefits at large when healthcare organizations compete to develop high quality healthcare products while reducing the cost of doing business (reflected in low prices), and when consumers choose wisely among healthcare products by purchasing those high quality products at low prices. We develop a theoretical model that encourages systematic empirical research to investigate whether consumer sovereignty in healthcare is fact or fiction. In doing so, we develop a series of theoretical propositions that may demonstrate that consumer sovereignty is more fiction than fact. Specifically, healthcare consumers lack the ability, motivation, and opportunity to choose healthcare products that are high in quality and low in price. Similarly, healthcare firms lack the ability, motivation, and opportunity to compete in ways to develop and market higher quality products at lower prices.     

Health as a consumption object: research notes and preliminary investigation

Through the processes of commodification and marketization, materials and human activities are brought within the domain of market exchange. The results of these accelerating processes are observed in the consumer culture centred on objects of consumption. We contend that, in addition to healthcare, health itself has become yet another object incorporated within consumption space. This contention is consistent with the perspective of consumption as the dominant social paradigm in the structuring of health and healthcare practices. In this paper we present the conceptual backdrop for our contentions, together with details of a heuristic study. Our findings support the view that people regard health as a consumption object. Furthermore, the evidence suggests a patterning of responses by social grade and gender. Given our wider interest in class‐based health inequalities, we use our results to comment on the broader policy debate concerning this phenomenon in relation to consumerism.     

A New Look at Constructed Choice Processes

Normative models of choice assert axiomatically that preferences are consistent, coherent, and determined only by relevant alternatives. In contrast to this classical economic perspective, behavioral models derived from research in psychology and consumer behavior assert that preferences are not guided by an internal, stable utility function but are constructed during the choice process. The current paper is based on a session on constructed choice processes (CCP) at the 2004 Choice Symposium that focused on how the standard CCP model can be enriched by bringing theories and tools from modern research in social cognition to bear on choice phenomenon. The richer conceptual framework presented by new, currently unpublished empirical work provides a novel perspective on choice construction by integrating the roles of subjective construal, experiential information, attribution, goals, and satisfaction in understanding preference construction processes in choice.     

Employee involvement in ideation and healthcare service innovation quality

ABSTRACT

This study hypothesizes and empirically tests the influence of involvement of (1) frontline employees and (2) top managers in ideation process on healthcare service innovation quality. Based on data from 168 service innovation projects in Dutch healthcare organizations, the empirical results indicate that frontline employee involvement and top management involvement in, respectively, idea generation and idea application both improve the quality of healthcare service innovation. We find that the positive effect of frontline employee involvement is stronger under the condition of higher service innovativeness. In the direct relationship of top management involvement and healthcare service innovation quality, our data do not show such a moderating effect. The key and general managerial implication of the findings is that healthcare organizations are inspired to involve frontline employees in the idea generation processes and involve top managers in the idea application processes of service innovation projects, in order to improve innovation quality.     

Developing a Scale for Measuring Service Quality Perceptions in Distance Education

Abstract

The emphasis of quality in distance education in the last decade tended to place on operational efficiency under the concepts of quality control and quality assurance. This tendency has shifted towards a student's perspective in the wake of greater competitive pressure and heightened students' expectations. This paper reports the results of a study to identify service quality determinants based on the students' perceptions. The results of an exploratory factor analysis of 25 items and a regression analysis produce five dimensions in the following priority: (1) learning facilities, (2) quality of course materials, (3) studying atmosphere, (4) capability of tutors, and (5) center arrangement for tutorials. This study highlights the pressing need for a distance education institution to pay attention to physical facilities and course materials which represent the core of the service offering and are relatively easier to evaluate than other service elements.     

HEALTHQUAL: a multi-item scale for assessing healthcare service quality

The purpose of this study is to examine the measurement dimensions of healthcare service quality proposed in previous studies, quality awards, and service quality accreditation and/or certification systems in the international community. Based on this review, a comprehensive set of healthcare service quality (HEALTHQUAL) measurement items is derived focusing on care processes and results. Thus, the study investigated priorities among the nine measurement items identified through 368 patients and 389 public respondents in South Korea. The results show that the degree of care improvements (26.55 %) was rated as the most important and the second was tangibles (19.82 %) by both groups. The proposed measurement items for HEALTHQUAL were tested using data collected from 385 patients and 251 public respondents at a hospital with more than 500 beds in South Korea. The proposed HEALTHQUAL model consisted of the following five components: empathy, tangibles, safety, efficiency, and degree of improvements of care service.     

A Conceptual Framework for Investigating ‘Capture’ in Corporate Sustainability Reporting Assurance

The assurance of corporate sustainability reporting has long been a controversial field. Corporate management and assurance providers are routinely accused of ‘capturing’ what should be an exercise in public accountability. This article responds to recent calls for an analysis of the process by which ‘capture’ takes place. Integrating elements of neo-institutional theory and the arena concept, the article sets out a fresh conceptual framework for investigating the dynamics of the interactions between the various bodies active in the assurance field in the UK.     

Quality Assurance Certification for Hospitality Marketing,Sales and Customer Services

The article proposes that there is a need to extend quality assurance schemes to encompass marketing and customer services. The hospitality industry's involvement in the consideration of quality assurance schemes is discussed and the degree to which they have been accepted. An explanation of the Marketing Quality Assurance Scheme (MQA) is presented with detailed examples of the objectives to be met in assuring the quality of marketing, sales plans and customer service. The study concludes that quality assurance schemes for services and marketing are essential for the hospitality industry, in order to guarantee the quality of provision and to offer a bridge from quality assurance to the concept of Total Quality Management.     

RESEARCH MODELLING IMPLICATIONS OF CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS IN FAMILY MANAGEMENT

The development of family management as a field of study has offered, to date, a number of conceptual frameworks which attempt to explain family behaviour with respect to management activities. Historically, the application of these conceptual frameworks has proceeded without orderly empirical testing. This paper attempts to provide guidelines for the empirical testing of these conceptual frameworks by developing a general research model and suggesting empirical testing procedures. The research issues of the unit of analysis, data availability, variable measurement, simultaneity and functional form are discussed. Suggestions for the future direction and the focus of family management research include the development and testing of measurement instruments for the components of the management process and the empirical testing of a general research model which represents the conceptual frameworks in family management.