How do policy levers shape the quality of a national health system?

Poor quality of care may have a detrimental effect on access and take-up and can become a serious barrier to the universality of health services. This consideration is of particular interest in view of the fact that health systems in many countries must address a growing public-sector deficit and respond to increasing pressures due to COVID-19 and aging population, among other factors. In line with a rapidly emerging literature, we focus on patient satisfaction as a proxy for quality of health care. Drawing on rich longitudinal and cross-sectional data for Spain and multilevel estimation techniques, we show that in addition to individual level differences, policy levers (such as public health spending and the patient-doctor ratio, in particular) exert a considerable influence on the quality of a health care system. Our results suggest that policymakers seeking to enhance the quality of care should be cautious when compromising the level of health resources, and in particular, health personnel, as a response to economic downturns in a sector that traditionally had insufficient human resources in many countries, which have become even more evident in the light of the current health crisis. Additionally, we provide evidence that the increasing reliance on the private health sector may be indicative of inefficiencies in the public system and/or the existence of features of private insurance which are deemed important by patients.     

Dynamic capabilities and high-tech entrepreneurial ventures’ performance in the aftermath of an environmental jolt

This paper contributes to studies on dynamic capabilities (DCs) by showing that a neglected environmental contingency – i.e. the occurrence of a jolt – shapes the DCs–performance relationship. We focus on high-tech entrepreneurial ventures because these are the firms that jolts affect most; in so doing, we also advance the understanding of DCs in the entrepreneurship field. We argue that, in the aftermath of an environmental jolt, the high-tech entrepreneurial ventures that use internationalization and new product development capabilities to modify their resource configuration and regain environmental fit enjoy better performance. Econometric estimates on a sample of 340 Italian high-tech entrepreneurial ventures confronting the consequences of the global economic crisis that began in 2008 confirm that separately using these two DCs has a positive performance effect. This effect is stronger for relatively smaller ventures. Interestingly, despite synergies should arise from the combined use of the two DCs, we do not detect any superadditive effects.     

金融结构对产业结构影响的时变特征研究——基于SUR和TVPSS模型的实证检验

金融结构与产业结构的关系一直是学术界的研究热点.文章利用中国1998—2017年的年度数据,构建似不相关回归模型从金融结构规模、效率及深化的角度分析金融结构对产业结构合理化和高级化的影响,建立时变参数状态空间模型描绘了金融结构对产业结构合理化和高级化的动态冲击.实证分析结果表明:金融结构规模提高产业结构合理化水平,促进了产业结构高级化;金融结构效率提高产业结构合理化水平,抑制了产业结构高级化;金融结构深化降低产业结构合理化水平,促进了产业结构高级化.金融结构规模、金融结构效率及金融结构深化对产业结构合理化和高级化的冲击均呈现出时变特征;金融结构对产业结构合理化的影响滞后于其对产业结构高级化的影响.金融结构对产业结构的冲击波幅呈现出前期波动大、后期较为平缓的状态,部分金融结构变量对产业结构的动态冲击呈现出"长尾"现象.当前的中国金融结构已经不适合当前的产业结构,需调整金融结构,以提升产业结构合理化水平和高级化水平.     

A Literature Review of Organizational Behavior Management Interventions in Human Service Settings from 1990 to 2016

We reviewed the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (JABA), Journal of Organizational Behavior Management (JOBM), and Behavior Analysis in Practice (BAP) from 1990 to 2016, to identify articles that evaluated organizational behavior management interventions in a human service setting. Of those articles, 75 articles met the inclusion criteria for the review, 44 from JABA (1990 to 2016), 22 from JOBM (1990 to 2016), and 7 from BAP (2008 to 2016). We categorized each selected article by setting, employee population, client population, assessment, dependent variable, independent variable, and outcome measures. Results from the review are discussed for all three journals. Recommendations are made to broaden the scope of population and dependent variable targets, include more assessments, and include outcome data when applicable.     

困境与超越：扶贫工作的政治学分析

扶贫开发是国家治理的重要内容，有着丰富的政治意涵，展示着执政党执政、政府治理的基本过程和价值归属。中国的扶贫工作带有着明显的运动式、项目制、压力型的色彩，在取得巨大成效的同时，也有着走向无序化、无效化的风险。以现代国家建设和政党建设的基本理念，构筑多中心的贫困治理格局，建立现代化的扶贫开发的制度体系，走向法治化、制度化、民主化、规范化是扶贫开发的治本之策。     

Social capital,guanxi and political influence in Chinese government relations

Social capital has emerged as a promising theoretical approach to understanding political influence in the public relations literature. However, the rationale of using social capital to influence corporate government relations in authoritarian societies is indistinct. To remedy this, we integrate Bourdieu’s (1986) and Lin’s (2001) social capital theories to explore how applying a variant form of social capital (e.g., guanxi) might shape corporate government relations in authoritarian China. A multi-method, qualitative approach was employed involving 44 interviews, participant observation and document review. The findings highlighted an underexamined “vertical” dimension of social capital (i.e., links with authority in a hierarchy), which enables corporations to exercise agency over the pre-existing and often vague regulatory environment. This study adds a new perspective to social capital with hierarchical guanxi that enriches our understanding of guanxi-based political influence in Chinese corporate government relations.     

Unequally Adrift: How Social Class and College Context Shape Students’ Mentorship Experiences

Faculty mentorship is a highly advantageous yet under-explored form of social capital which can grant access to co-curriculars (e.g., research assistantships), ensure strong letters of recommendation, and more. It is also typically informal and dependent on student initiative, requiring that students be skilled at engaging educational authority figures. Privileged students are most likely to have such skills as part of their dominant cultural capital, making faculty mentorship a site of social reproduction. To explore variations in this process, I compare two institution types: a small, teaching/undergraduate-focused regional university and a large, research-intensive flagship. In interviews with 68 working- and upper-middle-class students, I find that college context mediates the relationship of class background and faculty mentorship. Upper-middle-class students fostered advantageous faculty relationships at both universities, but working-class students diverged: at the flagship, they rarely approached professors in search of mentorship, while those at the regional university described close, beneficial connections with professors. I discuss working-class students’ dissimilar experiences in terms of each university’s structural and cultural characteristics (organizational habitus), particularly their institutional focus and size. I argue that through their particular organizational features, colleges can both reproduce and reduce inequalities, challenging the determinacy of precollege socialization in education.     

Measuring servitization progress and outcome: the case of ‘advanced services’

The purpose of this paper is to establish a framework for assessing the progress and outcome of a manufacturer’s transformation towards becoming a provider of ‘advanced services’ – a complex bundling of products and services, whereby manufacturers offer capabilities and outcomes instead of products alone. ‘Advanced services’ represent the most complex offering in the current servitization trend amongst manufacturers. However, current performance measures lack the breadth and focus to assess progress or outcomes, and so support research and practice of organisational transformation efforts required. To address this gap the paper investigates how a manufacturer’s efforts to become an ‘advanced services’ provider can be comprehensively measured, and develops a framework for assessing the transformation journey towards becoming an ‘advanced services’ provider. The research method is based on (1) a systematic literature review process to create a comprehensive set of service-related performance measures that are available to assess a manufacturer’s servitization efforts, followed by (2) an engagement with an expert panel to synthesise the identified measures and create a set of ‘advanced services’ performance measures. The proposed framework is presented as a scorecard that can be used in practice to assess the progress and outcome of a manufacturer’s transformation towards becoming a provider of ‘advanced services’.     

An empirical assessment of the operational performance through internal benchmarking: a case of a global logistics firm

This article solves an operational performance measurement problem of a global logistics firm through an internal benchmarking tool. The intended impact is to enable logistics firms to form a deeper understanding of their own internal processes and metrics. The methodology of this in-depth action research involves a sequential approach with a series of interviews, questionnaire-based surveys, operations data collated through observations and process mapping yielding real-world data. A series of statistical tests are conducted to analyse the collated data. Strategic priorities of the firm are integrated with the firm’s operational performance to ascertain the effective performance by considering both the tangible and intangible measures. The outcomes inform both practitioners and academics how the firm could improve its freight forwarding business’s profitability by ensuring that its operations meet the prioritised criteria. The ‘best practice’ derived from internal benchmarking forms an intermediate step towards external benchmarking. The outcomes facilitate investigating the current business strategy, the standard operating procedures and the scope of improving those.     

Social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country: The effect of gender on access to and requests for resources

This paper addresses gender differences in the social capital of entrepreneurs in a developing country. Social networks are often an important asset for accessing resources; however, they may also be a liability in developing countries, since entrepreneurs are often expected to support their contacts. Using a recent survey among urban and rural Ugandan entrepreneurs, we focus on the financial resources that entrepreneurs can obtain from their contacts on the one hand, and requests for financial support made to the entrepreneurs from these contacts on the other hand. Our results show that there are gender differences associated with access to, and requests for, financial resources.