Special care units express an increasing interest in adopting methods for quality management, previously developed and implemented in manufacturing firms. The paper examines the analogy between service management in special care units and the management of manufacturing processes. This paper is...

User Interfaces act as the interaction layer between human and computer and have an important role in system adoption. According to technology acceptance model, acceptance of a system is explained as a function of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. Since there are several external...

In manufacturing operations it is important to recognise the capabilities of the firm and established ways to position the current and expected manufacturing capabilities. The most recognised tool is the Product-Process matrix of Hayes and Wheelwright. Similarly, in service business there is a...

This article purports to investigate the relationship – in an empirical way – between the various operational indicators currently used for the management of call centers in Brazil and customer satisfaction. In this context, a set of call centers rendering services to a...

The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of past travel experience (i.e., number of trips and number of days away from home in last year), and on mature travelers’ quality of life (i.e., self-perceived health and global life satisfaction). A total number of 217 respondents...

This paper focuses on the impact of information systems providing real-time or near real-time knowledge of location, described as location-aware systems. The study utilizes a qualitative, interview-based approach to guide our understanding of the benefits associated with the increased...

This research effort is undertaken to determine the impact that one hospital’s diversion status has on other hospitals in a region and the strength of these interactions. The conditional probability of one hospital going on diversion given that another is already on diversion is...

Platform concepts have been around for about a decade now. While their focus was on the manufacturing industry in the beginnings, interest has shifted to services – and Internet-based services in particular. This paper provides an overview of popular product platform concepts, a new view...

The purpose of this research was to examine technology adoption and the educational change process. This paper found eight factors essential to technology adoption in countries that are heavily centralized and strongly affected by external forces (globalism etc.). These factors are...

Over the years, the notion of transactions has become synonymous with providing fault-tolerance, reliability and robustness to database systems. To extend the same transactional guarantees to new and evolving paradigms, such as Web service, the transactional mechanisms must first be adapted to...