Competitive bidding strategies for European public contracts

Public contracts would seem a wonderful opportunity for firms outside the EC, but European public contracts seem closed to competition between European countries, let alone countries outside the EC. Recent new directives by the European Commission suggest a change, albeit a slow one, in the situation, and there are as well competitive bidding strategies European and US. Jirms may want to consider to open the door for their participation in this large marketplace.     

Evaluating service firms: Approaches with policy recommendations

Evaluation of service firms is a problem because the service sector of the world economy is growing so fast. Consumers often do not have reliable information about services prior to making a buying decision. This paper presents a model of service evaluation. Several applications, including Consumers' Checkbook, Which? and a test conducted in the U.S., of a mail survey methodology are examined as possible solutions to this problem. Lessons learned from these experiences are provided. Finally, implications are drawn regarding tactical, public policy, and academic research issues.     

当公益营销成为一种战略

“好的企业与优秀的企业之间是有差别的。一家好的企业可以提供优秀的产品和服务;一家优秀的企业也可以提供优秀的产品和服务,但他还要努力地让这个世界变得更美好。”     

Psychological contracts and fairness: The effect of violations on customer service behavior

A conceptual model of the effect of psychological contracts and associated fairness perceptions on customer service organizational citizenship behaviors (CSOCB) is presented. Psychological contracts, individually held beliefs regarding employer-employee reciprocal expectations and obligations, provide a basis for the comprehensive perception of organizational justice. In turn, justice perceptions result in CSOCB, or externally directed extra-role behaviors. When customer contact employees perceive violations, these behaviors are likely to be either negative or a reduction of positive behaviors. Future research is discussed.     

The role of implicit contracts: Building public works in the 1840s in Portugal

This article studies financial schemes for building public works in the 1840s. The study of the Portuguese case clearly illustrates the importance of implicit contracts with governments in peripheral Europe, shedding light on solutions for financing the provision of public goods. Building roads and railways seems to have been the fruit of an implicit contract behind the tobacco monopoly in a country involved in social turmoil and civil wars. Reputation effects are called to explain the relevant range of the partners' negotiations, to reject the traditional historiography based on wrong management and speculation in a period of savage capitalism.     

Public and firm interests in public service diversifications

Public service organization's increasingly are considering diversification into new “for-profit” or “high-profit” enterprises. Such undertakings offer a number of potential benefits to both the organization and the public. They also have potential problems. This article examines some of the major types of benefits and problems in hopes that both public service managers and public policy makers will give a balanced consideration to these diversification efforts.     

Public service quality and customer satisfaction: exploring the attributes of service quality in the public sector

Beyond the existing SERVQUAL-based research, the authors develop an alternative model of public service quality. The various sources of public service quality are explored and a new classification scheme formulated by using critical incidents technique. Four main qualities of public service are identified: process quality, outcome quality, design quality, and relationship quality. The findings suggest that the critical attributes of public service quality for customer satisfaction differ according to the types of customers in the public sector. Final customers (beneficiaries) give priority to the process and outcome qualities, whereas intermediary customers (social workers) have high regard for the design and relationship qualities.     

Customer satisfaction and qualities in public service: an intermediary customer perspective

From an intermediary customer perspective, this study empirically investigates the causal relationships between service quality, relationship quality, design quality, and customer satisfaction in the public service value chain. Cross-sectional survey data were collected from social work, childcare, and healthcare services and were analyzed using structural equation modeling. It is found that all the quality dimensions are antecedents to customer satisfaction and relations between quality dimensions show distinctive patterns. The results show that relationship quality does not directly affect customer satisfaction, but can indirectly influence satisfaction through the mediation of both service and design qualities. The effect of the relationship and design qualities on customer satisfaction is stronger than that of service quality.     

Emotional Information Management: Concept development and measurement in public service announcements

Research on emotion as information in persuasive communication and ad response has created a need for a measure of individual abilities in the management of emotional information. Previous measures (e.g., emotional intelligence measures) lack adequate validity and reliability for use in persuasion and advertising contexts. Four studies iteratively refine a parsimonious Emotional Information Management scale that corresponds to theoretical dimensions of the construct and interrelationships between those dimensions—recognition of emotion, regulatory processes of optimistic utilization and management of emotions, as well as cognitive and emotional empathy. Reliability and construct validity are demonstrated, and scale norms are established. Although gender does not affect recognition of emotions or cognitive empathy, females exhibit greater emotional empathy ability, whereas males exhibit greater emotion regulation ability. Measuring emotional information management should contribute to greater understanding of responses to emotion‐laden or emotion‐eliciting persuasive communication (e.g., public service announcements). ©2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Societal and cultural examination of public service advertisements of a society in transition

Although public service advertisements (PSAs) can be viewed as either change agents or reflections of concerns about societal needs, there is little research on this topic. Rapid changes in newly industrializing countries have apparently brought about several negative consequences. In this study, we used multiple methods for exploring PSAs in Thailand to identify important societal needs. Furthermore, we examined variations in attitudes towards specific public service advertising themes using demographic and cultural variables. Through both naturalistic inquiry and a large-scale survey of 1756 respondents, we found that the priority placed on safety and social needs in the Thai culture was clearly reflected in PSA themes and messages. In addition, attitudes towards PSA themes were found to vary by education, age and traditional values, but not by religion. Propositions and suggestions for future research are also provided in the final section.     

广告的公益“骑士”

“骑士代表一种勇往直前、锲而不舍、所向披靡的精神，很积极、矬康、阳刚的感觉，我们一直追求这样一种事业发展态势，’南通骑士广告设计有限公司总经理韩志翔这样解释公司品牌的内涵．     

阿佩克思达彼思公益广告作品赏析

蓝光 一次灾难背后，有一个民族的坚强、从容与不屈，我们很荣幸身为其中一员，在余震中坚持做好自己的事。我们的客户——蓝光集团，在第一时间为灾区捐款1000万元和100。万瓶纯净水，并要求把他们一贯低调的风格延续到公益海报上。     

The morals of moral hazard: a contracts approach

Although moral hazard is a well‐known economic concept, there is a long‐standing controversy over its moral implications. The language economists use to describe moral hazard is often value‐laden, and implies moral judgments about the persons or actions of economic agents. This in turn leads some to question whether it is actually a scientific concept, or simply a convenient tool for criticizing certain public policies. At present, there is no consensus about the moral meaning of moral hazard, or about whether the concept can be salvaged by economists. As a first step toward resolving this problem, I suggest a contracts approach to moral hazard. I use the ‘title‐transfer’ theory of contract to clarify the moral content of moral hazard, thereby increasing its value to scholars in numerous disciplines. A contracts view is useful for economic policy discussions because it does not include hidden value judgments. At the same time, however, it is also valuable for ethicists because it directly explains a moral dimension of behavior under moral hazard, namely, the violation of property rights.     

Peculiarities of public sector clients in service innovations

This paper analyses knowledge-intensive business service firms and their innovation activities in the context of federal government procurement with empirical evidence from Swiss information technology firms. The paper contributes to the growing literature on knowledge-intensive business services by expanding the concept to also capture public sector clients. It focuses in particular on the ways in which having a public sector client influences a knowledge-intensive business service firm’s ability to innovate, opportunities for interactive learning with their clients, and ways in which having a public sector client allows a firm to diversify. The paper shows that having a federal agency as a client is quite different from a private sector client particularly with regard to multi-party systems on the client side, the importance of informal interactions, and the role of public reputation.     

Measuring service experience: Applying the satisfaction with travel scale in public transport

It is argued that favorable customer service experiences are crucial for the success of a company's offering, and research on the subject is growing rapidly. However, instruments for measuring service experience are not readily available. This study applies and validates the Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS) for measuring the service experience in public transport. The results confirm that service experience is multidimensional, consisting of a cognitive dimension related to service quality and two affective dimensions related to positive activation, such as enthusiasm or boredom, and positive deactivation, such as relaxation or stress.     

Congruence in the assessment of service quality between employees and customers: A study of a public health care delivery system

Using social information processing theory, we examined the congruence between employee and customer assessments of organizations' service quality. The setting was a public health care delivery system. Contrary to expectations, employee assessments of service quality were lower than those of their customers. Also unexpectedly, employees with professional training had less congruent assessments than other employees. As expected, employees with longer tenure and those in departments with stronger customer service work climates had more congruent assessments relative to their customers. The results have implications for both management theory and for managers interested in developing customer-centered organizations.     

Consumption in the public eye: The influence of social presence on service experience

Continuous improvement in managing customer relationships is a necessity for companies wishing to remain competitive in today's global marketplace. The two studies presented herein respond to this need by developing and testing a new nomological net that features social presence and its moderators as antecedents to service satisfaction. Study 1 discovers that when service experiences are positive, social presence enhances service satisfaction. Study 2 examines the interaction between service experience valence, social presence type and self-construal prime. The results show that when an interdependent self-construal is primed, social presence (both in-group and out-group) increases service satisfaction (dissatisfaction) during a positive (negative) service encounter, whereas, when an independent self-construal is primed, social presence exerts little impact on service satisfaction. Managers can benefit from these findings by considering the impact of social presence as they design their servicescapes.