Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to carry out queuing analysis to analyse patient load in outpatient and inpatient services to facilitate more realistic resource planning. Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts an analytical approach based on real life data (e.g. not a priori...

Strategic supply chain management has gained more importance with the effect of globalization. In today’s global market, well-managed supply chain is one of the most important requirements to be successful in the market. The main idea of the supply chain management is generation of good...

Many scholars and service practitioners perceive service recovery as an important means to retain customer after service failures, but in practice many service recovery efforts are unsuccessful. Studies on service recovery suggest that recovery activities are the core process of service...

The use of electronic money transfer through cellular networks ("mobile money") is rapidly increasing in the developing world. The resulting electronic currency ecosystem could improve the lives of the estimated 2 billion people who live on less than $2 a day by facilitating more secure,...

The smart phone industry has unique supply chain relationships. Companies at all levels of the supply chain compete and coordinate with each other for market share and profit. This paper examines the impact of power structures on the decision of pricing and channel selection between a free...

Previous research has verified the positive impact that internal strategic fit can have on business performance. However, many service organizations experience the difficulty of managing the fit between competitive and operations’ strategies. Inherent within the problem has been insufficient...

Recently, large-scale, Web-based service marketplaces, where many small service providers compete among themselves in catering to customers with diverse needs, have emerged. Customers who frequent these marketplaces seek quick resolutions and thus are usually willing to trade prices with waiting...

We use hospital-level discharge data from cardiac patients in California to estimate the effects of focus on operational performance. We examine focus at three distinct levels of the organization--at the firm level, at the operating unit level, and at the process flow level. We find that focus...

Research on the effects of environmental management has largely neglected the importance of green service practices and their impact on environmental protection and cost reduction. There is also little knowledge on how service-oriented firms may leverage their efforts in providing green services...

Classical models of service systems with rational and strategic customers assume queues to be either fully visible or invisible. In practice, however, most queues are only "partially visible" or "opaque", in the sense that customers are not able to discern precise queue length upon arrival. This...