Patient care,satisfaction and service quality in health care

It is becoming increasingly important in the healthcare setting to treat patients as consumers and measure their satisfaction with medical services rendered. As such, patient satisfaction should be considered an important output of a country's healthcare system, basically reflecting the stage of its development. The conducted study tested students’ satisfaction with the quality of service provided by student polyclinics. In particular, the study has analysed the impacts of personal relationships, promptness and tangibility on student satisfaction. The findings imply that all three factors significantly affect patient satisfaction, with personal relationships having the strongest impact. Such results suggest that healthcare providers should encourage their doctors to devote more time to their patients and show genuine concern for patients’ problems if they wish to improve overall satisfaction of their patients with the delivered services.     

Natural Resource Agencies and Their Motivations to Partner: The Public Lands Partnership Model

Public land management agencies, such as the USDA Forest Service (USFS), utilize partnerships to accomplish a variety of tasks and meet specific targets. However, public agency personnel invest considerable time and energy to develop and maintain partnerships. Research on partnering motivations typically focuses on volunteers, nonprofit organizations and corporations, leaving the motivations of public agency personnel relatively unknown. This paper presents findings from a multiple partnership case study design on six national forests. The Public Lands Partnership Model (PLPM) is presented as a conceptualization of 13 motivations, classified into 3 distinct motivation types (i.e., interpersonal, intrapersonal, and institutional), that influence the propensity of agency personnel to partner. Additional influences, such as national forests’ external environment and internal commitment, need further exploration to confirm the PLPM and generalize results to the USFS and other agencies engaged in public land management partnerships.     

跨文化导向的服务接触研究

文章首先论述了服务营销中的一个重要概念——服务接触的含义和研究的重要性，然后运用霍夫施泰德的文化维度理论重点分析了不同文化背景下服务接触的差异。最后简要阐述了对服务企业国际化的管理启示。     

三农服务社发展状况及存在问题研究——基于河南临颍“三农服务社”的调查研究

中储粮河南分公司自2009年5月开始试点、2010年春全面铺开三农服务社建设以来,三农服务社的发展状况一直受到社会各方的关注。通过对三农服务社发展状况的深入调研,总结其成效及问题,为三农服务社更好的发展提出政策建议。     

Relative prices and electronic substitution: Changes in household-level demand for postal delivery services from 1986 to 2004

This paper quantifies the extent to which the shift in the aggregate household-level demand for postal delivery services can be attributed to the appearance of alternative modes of communication versus the concomitant rise in postal prices. We find that both recent postal price increases and the penetration of personal computer technology among US households led to similar reductions in postal expenditure. We further find that a 5% postal price increase, such as the one introduced in January 2006 reduces revenue collected from US households by $215 million and imposes an aggregate welfare loss on US households of $333 million.     

移动设备在旅游移动信息服务中能用户接受行为实证研究

本文在理论分析和对特定游客群体（上海市大学生旅游者）进行深度访谈的基础上，构建了移动设备用户接受行为模型，通过实证调研的方法对所提出的结构方程模型进行了验证，并剖析了影响特定游客使用移动设备用于旅行的因素。结果表明，感知有用性、感知易用性、先前的旅游体验与游客满意度之间存在显著的正向影响，它们和使用意愿、使用行为等变量共同影响着游客忠诚度。最后，基于实证结果，对未来移动设备在旅游移动信息服务中的应用以及如何提升游客满意度与忠诚度提出了相关的建议。     

A decomposition approach to analysing racial and gender biases in Farm Service Agency's lending decisions

This study provides a different perspective in revisiting the racial and gender discrimination issue at the Farm Service Agency (FSA). Employing the Oaxaca–Blinder decomposition method, this study analyses disparities in approved loan amounts among racial and gender classes of borrowers. This study's results indicate substantial differentials in approved loan amount gaps between racial and gender classes, favouring white and female borrowers, respectively. Further scrutiny of the borrowers’ comparative financial conditions presented to FSA to support their loan applications, however, indicate that these borrower groups significantly dominate their peers in a number of measures that indicate their financial strengths and relatively greater capability to repay their future lending obligations. Hence, this study's results can hardly be construed as evidence of biased lending decisions as these borrower groups should rightfully be offered more favourable loan terms, such as larger loan amounts, by the FSA.     

A decomposition scheme for large-scale Service Network Design with asset management

In this paper, we address a large-scale freight transportation problem for maximizing the profit of a carrier. We propose two solving algorithms using a decomposition of the problem into three main steps: construction of the network, filling vehicles with commodities and construction of the vehicle plannings. The resolution of these steps involves heuristic schemes, Mixed Integer Programming and Constraint Programming techniques. To evaluate the model and the solution algorithms, we produce instances based on a study of real-life data. The results show that the methods without transhipment provide solutions with a good computation time/quality trade-off.     

电信服务提供商的多因素激励机制研究

在电信运营商和SP合作中,电信运营商提供业务传输通道,SP主要提供业务服务,然后二者按一定比例对该业务收益进行分成。如何处理电信运营商与SP的关系,是电信产业未来几年所要研究的重点,由于电信运营商和电信服务提供商（SP）之间存在利益冲突和信息不对称,很容易导致SP的违规行为。电信运营商和SP之间的关系属于多因素的委托-代理关系。在设计委托-代理激励合同时,从多因素角度考虑了电信运营商对SP的激励,在设计委托-代理激励合同时,从两个任务的角度即：可观测到的SP发展的用户数、业务量和用户数及业务量增量和可观测到的SP的信用积分和等级。并通过风险成本和代理成本研究可知对SP进行多因素激励是非常必要的。在具体分析时采用了双因素激励模型。     

Service-dominant logic: continuing the evolution

Since the introductory article for what has become known as the “service-dominant (S-D) logic of marketing,” “Evolving to a New Dominant Logic for Marketing,” was published in the Journal of Marketing (Vargo, S. L., & Lusch, R. F. (2004a)), there has been considerable discussion and elaboration of its specifics. This article highlights and clarifies the salient issues associated with S-D logic and updates the original foundational premises (FPs) and adds an FP. Directions for future work are also discussed.