Communication satellites for rural development

The author points out that telecommunications in rural areas are an essential infrastructure for development, and that appropriately designed satellites could form an important part of rural communications technology. He argues that hybrid systems involving clusters of communities, served by a single ground station and rural radio telephone interconnection, are likely to be lower cost than all-satellite or terrestrial-only systems.     

Challenges for a broadband service strategy in rural areas: A Romanian case study

Broadband network deployment plays an important part in the strategic policies in Europe to promote growth and innovation in all sectors of the economy in addition to social and territorial cohesion. In compliance with existing community policies, Romanian strategies in this field seek to provide the necessary support for broadband connectivity in rural areas. The goal of this study is to define a rural end-user profile to plan the most appropriate broadband service strategy from both a technical and a marketing perspective. Our empirical research involves an exploratory survey conducted in rural areas in northwestern Romania (n=1040 respondents). The findings reveal low levels of customer satisfaction and users more interested in data transfer than voice or video applications. Given this rural user profile, simulations of network traffic were conducted. The simulation results suggest that WLANs are the most suitable solution for the “last mile” broadband segment.     

Juggling ecumenical wisdoms and xenophobic institutions: Framing and modelling China's telecommunications universal service and rural digitalization initiatives and policies

China historically belongs to a farming civilization, in which rural population tended to stick to their farmlands for a lifetime. This situation has somehow been changing with, inter alia, the advancement and application of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). In recent years, China has been pushing for the inclusion of its rural communities into modern information society through aggressively digitalizing its rural areas under a public policy umbrella. With the literature's lopsided focus on Western nations, a cohesive paradigm in mapping the Chinese style of universal service implementation remains elusive, a situation that has often obfuscated deeper understanding of the Chinese case from a socioeconomic, technological, or institutional perspective. The main purpose of this present paper lies in the framing and modelling of China's universal service and rural digitalization practices. The paper proposes and applies an integrated offer–agent–target (OAT) framework in a retrospective and empirical examination of the Chinese case and conceptual characterization of what has appeared to be the Chinese model. In so doing, China's universal service development is demarcated into discernible stages that are then pattern-matched with corresponding institutional landscapes. Three salient stages are identified and corresponding institutional landscapes explicated. Finally, insights and suggestions are offered that throws lights on the current issues and future developments.     

An evolutionary framework for service innovation: Insights of complexity theory for service science

There is an increasing need for a theory-based and industry-oriented framework for service innovation in both research and practice. However the study of service innovation has been somewhat limited. This paper applies two models of complexity theory (Kauffman's NK model in biology and organizational ambidexterity in organization science) for service innovation and proposes a novel perspective on service innovation as an evolutionary process, which is interactive, local, unpredictable, and emergent. The paper also proposes a typology of service innovation that includes eight different strategic orientations of service innovation; also included are illustrations from a knowledge-intensive service industry, particularly the IT-based consulting and service industry sector. Drawing from this complexity theory perspective, the paper discusses numerous implications for future conceptualization of service, multidimensionality of service innovation, and service innovation strategies.     

Dynamic capabilities for service innovation: conceptualization and measurement

Although the development of new services is becoming a major concern for firms throughout the entire economy, there is only little insight in the organizational antecedents of service innovation. It is widely acknowledged that engaging in R&D is relatively uncommon for service providers, but there are also indications that the R&D concept is poorly applicable to service innovation in the first place. Therefore, attention is shifting toward the actual capabilities that allow a firm to source ideas and convert them into marketable service propositions. This paper provides the operationalization of a set of dynamic service innovation capabilities (DSICs) that is general enough to be relevant across different sectoral contexts. While the selected framework is found to consolidate earlier works on the specificities of service innovation, it also captures broad insights on the evolutionary properties of the creation of novel solutions. Thereby, it exemplifies how DSICs can be conceptualized according to the so‐called synthesis approach to service innovation. We operationalize a refined version of such DSICs and develop a measurement scale, using two multi‐industry subsamples from a dataset of 391 Dutch firms. The measured capabilities are found to correlate to different extents with performance measures. Our main contribution, a validated scale for five complementary DSICs, opens the way to comparative analyses regarding firm abilities for creating innovative services.     

International Scientific and a New Communication - Old Problems and a New Perspective

The author establishes the point that although English is the major language of scientific and technical communication important work is published in other languages, notably German, Russian and Japanese. The author argues that English-speaking scientists and technologists are probably unaware of this work to the detriment of technical progress. Presenting evidence that the three traditional cures' are impractical or unworkable (i.e. become pro- ficient in foreign languages, wait for effective machine translation or agree on a single scientific communication language) the author recommends a new approach. This is that certainly German and probably Russian should be compulsory but unexamined parts of the scientific educational curriculum, right through the secondary and higher educational stages. He also advocates in a more limited way a new type of course in Japanese in which it is treated more as a code than as a language.     

A study of service quality in rural ICT renters of Iran by SERVQUAL

The development of rural telecommunication services in Iran has been a major and national concern during the past few years. Towards the national planning and in a giant movement, 10 000 centers have been established in rural areas. Because of the novelty of such centers, the authors try to measure the service quality of the rural ICT centers using the SERVQUAL model. The results can be used towards the betterment of the services. Five hypotheses including tangibility, accountability, guarantee, empathy and reliability of service were examined. Twenty four ICT centers were selected in Rasht city as sample. Considering common sense or perception, 63% of the subjects evaluated the quality of services as average. In terms of quality, empathy was ranked as the ideal dimension followed by tangibility, certainties, trust, and guarantee, respectively. However, the least appropriate dimension of quality was given to accountability. In terms of expectation, the highest percentage of individuals, that is, 92% believed that quality of services was important, and believed that among the components of quality indices from the most to the least important items were: reliability, tangibility, accountability, guarantee, and empathy consecutively. This research showed that the SERVQUAL model can be used for determine the quality of services offered by Tele-centers in rural areas.     

User motivation for broadband: A rural Danish study

The diffusion of broadband has gained much research attention, in particular in relation to the urban-rural divide. However, research has focused primarily on the supply side of broadband roll-out, while the demand side has been somewhat neglected. This article illustrates the complexity of broadband adoption and argues that a rural adoption approach needs to draw on existing social meaning systems. By focusing on the user motivation for broadband, this article presents findings from a qualitative study of rural residents. Means-end theory was used as a framework for understanding these motives. Furthermore, the article adapts the FCB grid as a tool for both public and private providers of broadband to examine effective rural promotion strategy.     

Potential for videophones in Japan: A service proposal

The author proposes the introduction of a videophone communication service to cater for workers temporarily relocated away from their homes and families. An NTT market survey suggests that there is a perceived need for such a service. If the toll for the service is kept low, and communication centres are easily accessible, significant use of videophones may be expected in Japan.     

服务中国--立达纺织机械(上海)有限公司负责人风思祺专访

立达集团的销售业务已在中国开展了70多年,是公认的短纤和化纤长丝纺纱机械,非织造布以及切粒设备的市场领导者.立达在中国的雇员人数已超过300人,分别从事销售,售后服务,试车,生产,财务和技术支持等工作.     

Organizing for solutions: How project-based firms integrate project and service businesses

Project-based firms (PBFs) increasingly provide comprehensive solutions that consist of products, product systems and services. In solution businesses, long-term collaborative relationships between solution providers and customers are essential. However, little is still known about how relationship marketing activities should be integrated across organizational units, particularly at the practical level of delivering individual projects and services belonging to complete solutions. In this study, based on a case study of a project-based firm and four of its system delivery projects, we identify eight micro-level integration mechanisms for integrating the activities of the project and service business units at the level of delivering a single solution. The joint participation of both project and service business units in project and service activities over the life cycle of a single delivered system enhances the management of customer relationships between the units, and ensures the continuity of the customer relationship over the system life cycle. The identified integration mechanisms also help PBFs to integrate services into their core business and overcome the problems arising from the discontinuous nature of project business.     

Direct broadcast satellites in Japan: A case study in government-business partnerships

The following case study examines government-business partnerships in the planning and implementation of direct broadcast satellite (DBS) communications in Japan. The country's decision to launch the world's first DBS system demonstrated a national commitment to advance the cause of a highly sophisticated technology. For Japan's Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications DBS was clearly a high-profile project that would invite both national and international attention. Less clear were the unintended consequences that would result from planning a new system of broadcast communication that involved balancing the unique requirements of a non-profit corporation in the form of NHK and Japan's five major commercial broadcasters.     

Structured packings for use in oxygen service: Flammability considerations

Metallic structured packings have found increasing use in the cryogenic distillation of air. An experimental program was performed to test the flammability of selected metal packings under simulated high oxygen concentration operating conditions. Aluminum flammability in gaseous oxygen has been shown to be very dependent upon argon dilution, and in the presence of liquid oxygen, strong energy releases have been observed. Brass packing exhibited an unexpectedly high relative flammability whereas copper has been found to be non-flammable in all tested oxygen purities. These findings suggest the use of copper structured packing in higher purity GOX/LOX regions of an air separation distillation column and aluminum structured packing in the remainder of the column.     

Identifying buying influences for a professional service: Implications for marketing efforts

This study analyzes the structure of a buying center for a professional service—CPA services. The results suggest CPA buying centers are similar in size and in the number of levels of corporate hierachy and functional areas involved to buying centers for other industrial services. Various buying firm characteristics (size, amount of audit fee, presence of an audit committee) were associated with differences in CPA buying center structure. The relationship of the results to prior industrial marketing research and their implications for marketing CPA services are discussed.     

Financing telecommunications for rural development

Evidence shows that there has been serious underinvestment in telecommunications facilities in developing countries (DCs). This article analyses the reasons for this neglect, and demonstrates that a major restrictive factor in the development of telecommunications facilities in DCs — particularly in rural areas — has been the absence of adequate foreign exchange financing. Through an analysis of three major mechanisms for financing investment — supplier credits, multilateral lending and bilateral lending — and of the policies of the major institutions involved, the article identifies those policies that will stimulate the expansion of rural telecommunications in DCs.     

培养农村实用型人才，扩大农村劳动力就业

农民脱贫致富的长效机制在于提高农村劳动力就业竞争力,并通过政策措施扩大农村劳动力就业规模。因此要大力培养农村实用型人才,提高自身素质;建立城乡统筹就业机制,促进农村劳动力在城乡、区域间的有序流动和合理配置;规范劳务服务管理,提高农村劳动力就业组织化程度;加强信息化建设,完善农村劳动力供求信息系统;打造劳务输出品牌,建设农村劳动力转移和输出的绿色通道;加强政策激励,引导农民工自主创业。     

Auctions for universal service obligations

This paper proposes the use of auctions for determining which carriers should undertake a universal service obligation, and what compensation they should receive for performing this function. From the regulator's perspective the auction would reveal carriers’ valuations of the USO, determine the number of USO providers endogenously, and provide an alternative to traditional cost-of-service regulation. Since bidding is a voluntary action by the firms, auctions would serve also to discipline the regulator. While auctions are compatible with competitive local service markets, they can also serve as a transition to competitive markets.     

Growth strategies for service firms

Two characteristics of services—intangibility of the offering and simultaneity of production and consumption—have important implications for strategic planning. Four of these implications are described. Life cycle, experience, and market share, which are the usual determinants of profitability that provide guides for strategic planning are not easily applied to the service firm. Therefore growth strategies need to be revised. In its second part the paper suggests alternative growth strategy paths for service firms. It brings forward three main remarks. First, the service firm should not overuse its delivery system and its image by attempting to serve the needs of too many sociodemographic segments. Second, service development and concentric diversification are not sequential choices; the latter is not so distant from the former as may be commonly perceived. Third, expansion to out-of-country markets represents a risk discontinuity; it should be approached by service firms with considerable flexibility and willingness to interact with different cultures.     

Agricultural technology adoption and poverty reduction: A propensity-score matching analysis for rural Bangladesh

This study aims at shedding some light on the potential impact of agricultural technology adoption on poverty alleviation strategies. It does so through an empirical investigation of the relationship between technological change, of the Green Revolution type, and wellbeing of smallholder farm households in two rural Bangladeshi regions. As technology adoption is not randomly assigned but there is ‘self-selection into treatment’, the paper tackles a methodological issue in assessing the ‘causal’ effect of technology on farm-household wellbeing through the non-parametric ‘p-score matching analysis’. It pursues a targeted evaluation of whether adopting a modern seed technology causes resource-poor farmers to improve their income and decrease the propensity to fall below the poverty line. It finds a robust and positive effect of agricultural technology adoption on farm household wellbeing suggesting that there is a large scope for enhancing the role of agricultural technology in ‘directly’ contributing to poverty alleviation.