A Note on SERVQUAL Reliability and Validity in Information System Service Quality Measurement

Today's information system function includes a large service component. Recent research has examined the SERVQUAL instrument as a possible measure to assist managers and researchers in evaluating service quality. To further examine the appropriateness of the SERVQUAL measure, a large industry sample serves to verify the anticipated structure of the instrument. In addition, a high correlation with a common measure of user satisfaction indicates that the SERVQUAL metric may indeed represent accurate views of user perception. As such, the SERVQUAL instrument can serve as a useful indicator for information system managers attempting to identify areas of needed service improvement and to researchers seeking a success measure of information system services.     

The role of the minimum clinically important difference and its impact on designing a trial

The minimum clinically important difference (MCID) between treatments is recognized as a key concept in the design and interpretation of results from a clinical trial. Yet even assuming such a difference can be derived, it is not necessarily clear how it should be used. In this paper, we consider three possible roles for the MCID. They are: (1) using the MCID to determine the required sample size so that the trial has a pre-specified statistical power to conclude a significant treatment effect when the treatment effect is equal to the MCID; (2) requiring with high probability, the observed treatment effect in a trial, in addition to being statistically significant, to be at least as large as the MCID; (3) demonstrating via hypothesis testing that the effect of the new treatment is at least as large as the MCID. We will examine the implications of the three different possible roles of the MCID on sample size, expectations of a new treatment, and the chance for a successful trial. We also give our opinion on how the MCID should generally be used in the design and interpretation of results from a clinical trial.     

AN EVALUATION OF ORDER RELEASE MECHANISMS IN A JOB-SHOP ENVIRONMENT

Controlling the flow of material on the shop floor involves releasing and dispatching jobs to meet customer due-date requirements while attempting to keep operating costs low. This report presents an evaluation of five releasing mechanisms and four dispatching rules under various levels of aggregate due-date tightness, shop cost structure, and machine utilization using simulation. The performance criteria of total shop cost, jobs on shop floor, deviation from due dates, and job queue time are collected to demonstrate the interactive nature of releasing and dispatching on shop performance.     

Statistical considerations in a delayed‐start design to demonstrate disease modification effect in neurodegenerative disorders

There has been a paradigm shift in diagnostic conceptualization of Alzheimer's disease (AD) based on the current evidence suggesting that structure and biology changes start to occur before clinical symptoms emerge. Consequently, therapeutic drug development is also shifting to treat early AD patients using biomarkers for enrichment in clinical trials. A similar paradigm shift is occurring for Parkinson disease. In the absence of acceptable biomarkers that could be combined with a clinical endpoint to demonstrate a disease modification (DM) effect in neurodegenerative disorders, a delayed‐start design can be applied to demonstrate a lasting effect on the disease course. The delayed‐start design includes two treatment periods, where in period 1, patients are randomized to receive an active treatment or placebo, and in period 2, placebo patients are switched to the active treatment while patients in the active treatment arm will continue the same treatment. The hypothesis is that patients who start the active treatment later will fail to catch up to the treatment benefit achieved by patients who receive the active treatment in both periods. A usual analytical approach has sought to demonstrate the divergence of slope during period 1 and the parallelism of slopes during period 2 as the DM effect. However, due to heterogeneity in timing and the magnitude of maximal effect among patients, nonlinear response over time could be observed within the two treatment arms in both periods. We propose an approach to evaluate the DM effect with the linearity assumption for treatment differences, but not for each arm separately.     

SELF-SAMPLING: A UNIQUE AND EFFECTIVE MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

Self-sampling, which is similar to work sampling, is a measurement technique where participants categorize their own activities. The ratio of observations in an activity category to the total observations provides an estimator of the population proportion of time spent on that category of activity. This paper summarizes how self-sampling works and describes an example involving business school faculty.     

The Impact of Organizational Culture on Time‐Based Manufacturing and Performance

Firms are utilizing an array of manufacturing practices in their quest for survival and success in the marketplace. The implementation of those practices has not always resulted in success stories as the focus had been mostly on technical issues, with little concern for “soft issues.” For example, the enabling role of organizational culture has often been ignored. Using Schein's conceptualization of culture as underlying assumptions, espoused values, and artifacts, we examine a framework that relates culture and manufacturing practices to performance. The underlying assumption of customer orientation is posited to affect espoused values such as beliefs on investing in facilities and equipment to leverage intellectual work and to promote creativity, beliefs on working with others, beliefs on making decisions that are global, beliefs on management control, and beliefs on integrating with suppliers. The espoused values are hypothesized to affect visible attributes of culture (behaviors) such as time‐based manufacturing practices, which firms are employing for competitive advantage. A sample of 224 firms is used for developing research instruments and testing the hypothesized relationships advanced. Results indicate that high levels of customer orientation lead to a set of managerial beliefs that are collaborative and integrative. In turn, certain espoused values support a high level of time‐based manufacturing practice, which leads to high performance.     

A Computerized Approach to Decision Process Tracing for Decision Support System Design*

We propose the use of computerized process tracing (CPT) tools as an appropriate approach for monitoring the information acquisition and evaluation phase of specific decision processes. CPT tools are unobtrusive and seem particularly relevant for evaluating certain decision tasks that may be supported by decision support systems (DSS). CPT tools can be an important component of DSS development. An information systems research taxonomy developed by previous researchers [29] [36] is used to position research work involving the methodology of CPT. Using a critique suggested by Libby [28], CPT tools are evaluated and compared to alternative process tracing tools. A brief empirical example using CPT is provided, and future uses relative to DSS are suggested. The appendix includes an example of a specific CPT tool.     

Nonprofit mission statement focus and financial performance

Mission statements have been adopted nearly universally in nonprofit organizations. Their ubiquity is based on a presumption that a well‐designed mission statement is linked to better organizational performance because it provides a framework for decision making, influence over staff and volunteer motivation, and a mechanism for signaling organizational legitimacy to stakeholders. Despite collective confidence in mission statement utility, the relationship between mission statements and performance has received minimal attention. In this exploratory study we measured several attributes of mission statements in women's rights nonprofit organizations, with particular attention to the degree to which the statement focuses on organizational purpose and the relationship between focus and several measures of organization financial performance. The findings indicated that mission statements with a more focused geographic scope were associated with lower overhead ratios. In contrast, mission statements that identified more target client groups were associated with larger one‐year increases in contribution. Despite the statistical significance, the relationships were weak, calling into question common assumptions about the importance of the mission statement to a nonprofit organization.     

Improving the Utilization of Front-Line Service Delivery System Personnel*

There are two types of work typically performed in services which differ in the degree of control management has over when the work must be done. Serving customers, an activity that can occur only when customers are in the system is, by its nature, uncontrollable work. In contrast, the execution of controllable work does not require the presence of customers, and is work over which management has some degree of temporal control. This paper presents two integer programming models for optimally scheduling controllable work simultaneously with shifts. One model explicitly defines variables for the times at which controllable work may be started, while the other uses implicit modeling to reduce the number of variables. In an initial experiment of 864 test problems, the latter model yielded optimal solutions in approximately 81 percent of the time required by the former model. To evaluate the impact on customer service of having front-line employees perform controllable work, a second experiment was conducted simulating 5, 832 service delivery systems. The results show that controllable work offers a useful means of improving labor utilization. Perhaps more important, it was found that having front-line employees perform controllable work did not degrade the desired level of customer service.     

THE COLOR OF THE UNDERGRADUATE EXPERIENCE AND THE OCCUPATIONAL ATTAINMENT OF BLACKS AND WHITES: Evidence from Longitudinal Data

This study examines the impact of attendance at colleges with higher black enrollment on occupational attainment. The unique multipopulation LISREL models focus on blacks and whites, specify income and occupational self-direction as distinct dimensions of labor market accomplishment, and adjust for the possible confounding influence of college selectivity and precollege self-appraisals. Data from the NLS-72, augmented by selectivity and black enrollment data from other sources, are utilized. Findings largely support the hypothesis of within-race parity in occupational attainment. Black enrollment exerts nonsignificant effects on income among blacks and occupational self-direction in both races and slightly enhances income among whites.