Service Barriers of Chinese Family Caregivers in Canada

ABSTRACT

Family caregiving is a stressful process, especially when the complexity of being an immigrant or ethnic minority is added. This paper examined service barriers experienced by Chinese immigrant family caregivers in Canada and the predictors of different types of barriers. Principle component analysis was performed with the barriers reported loading onto cultural barriers, administrative problems, circumstantial challenges, perceived negative quality of services, and personal attitudes. Multiple regression analysis was used to identify the role of the culture-related factors in predicting service barriers, controlling for socio-demographic status of the caregivers'. The results show that financial factors significantly predicted the number and types of barriers reported by the caregivers. Culture-related factors were significant in predicting the total number of access barriers and the different types of barriers experienced by the family caregivers. The findings indicate the importance of culturally sensitive support for family caregivers in order to reduce the access barriers.     

Philanthropy and Government

Abstract

This study examines the effect of characteristics of the caregiving network on the likelihood of using supportive services by dependent older persons. Logistic regression analysis was conducted with a probability sample of community-dwelling elders cared for by their wives or daughters (n = 209). Results indicate that the specific composition of the caregiving networks, including the identity of the primary caregiver (wives vs. daughters), the availability and identity (kin or friends) of secondary helpers determines the likelihood of service use. The findings suggest that elders cared for by their wives alone may be quite isolated and should be the priority for community outreach services.     

Withdrawal from the public employment service by young unemployed: a matter of non-take-up or of non-compliance? How non-profit social work initiatives may inspire public services

In their effort to increase labour market participation, several EU welfare states are currently confronted with the problem of an ‘off-register NEET generation’, that is, a significant group of unemployed youngsters who do not register with the public employment service (PES) or withdraw early. Their behaviour is puzzling as they risk a penalty in the form of a reduction or a loss of benefits. Combining insights from non-compliance theory and non-take-up theory, this article argues that this withdrawal cannot be fully explained by the calculations of risks, costs and benefits that these youngsters make, nor by problematic attitudes. At least as important are the factors at the organisational level which prevent the youngsters from taking up their rights. An alternative activation approach based on private non-profit social work practice, namely integrated guidance, is proposed in order to improve participation in PES services. The findings are based on a study of nine pilots involving hard-to-reach young unemployed people in Belgium. A triangulation of quantitative and qualitative methods was used to collect and analyse the data.     

城市居家养老公共服务产业刍议:基于浙江实践

城市居家养老具有准公共服务的属性,公共服务产业是其发展的必由之路。经济水平、社会发展和公共政策三方面因素决定了一个城市的居家养老公共服务产业是行政化的、社会化的或市场化的。浙江实践表明,在构建城市居家养老公共服务产业过程中,应重视初始制度设计,强调政府责任,因地制宜发展,突出家庭孝道。     

Inventory‐Related Compensation in Decentralized Organizations

We consider a principal agent problem in a decentralized organization. The agent holds private precontracting information with respect to an uncertain demand in a single period setting. Being head of a profit center, his only task is to determine the optimal order quantity. We show that using a profit share as the only performance measure to incentivize the agent creates agency costs. In fact, offering a menu of profit‐sharing contracts to the agent to pick from, requires rent payments to motivate the agent to always choose the desired contract. This result still holds if a fixed payment is added. Using an inventory‐related component as a third measure, however, allows one to solve the agency problem and to achieve first best outcomes. Precisely, each contract needs to specify a bonus or a penalty conditioned on the inventory level at the end of the selling season combined with a profit share and a fixed pay. The paper not only demonstrates that first best can be achieved in the described setting, it also provides a theoretical explanation for the observed practice of using inventory‐related compensation elements, such as service‐level agreements, in organizations.     

The impact of a waiting-time threshold in overflow systems with impatient customers

This paper analyzes the performance of call centers with impatient customers, two levels of support, and an overflow mechanism. Waiting calls from the front-office queue – if not reneging – are sent to the back office if at least one back-office agent is available and if a certain threshold t on the waiting time is reached. We approximate such systems via a continuous-time Markov chain that allows for overflow immediately upon arrival. Two different approaches for the derivation of the respective probability of an overflow are developed. Numerical results compare the reliability of these Markovian performance approximations for different parameter settings. The impact of the threshold t on different performance measures is shown dependent on the impatience of customers.     

顾客抱怨行为的前置因素及调节因素分析

基于前人的研究并结合中国消费者的实际,我们尝试提出和验证了一个以理论为基础、用于解释消费者抱怨成因及行为反应的整体框架。本研究还重构了抱怨行为反应的两阶段动态模型并剖析了它们之间的相互关系。此外,本研究还考察了感知抱怨成本、中国文化背景下命(缘)的消费者个人价值观以及服务补救失验这三个变量所起到的调节作用。     

价值取向对服务业顾客抱怨倾向的影响

顾客抱怨可以为企业持续改进服务和重新赢得顾客提供有价值的信息,因此,研究顾客抱怨行为有重要的现实意义。本文在对现有研究进行回顾的基础上,借鉴顾客抱怨规划行为理论,通过实证研究分析了顾客价值取向对其抱怨倾向的影响。结果发现,顾客价值取向不同,影响他们抱怨倾向的主要因素也不相同,这要求服务企业需要根据目标顾客的价值取向制定相应的政策。     

市场导向、创新与企业表现的关系——基于中国服务业的实证研究

市场导向的采用可以产生良好的企业表现等命题已被广泛接受,然而,二者之间具体关系的实证分析尚还不足,尤其是中国服务业中二者的具体关系研究几乎空白。本文以中国服务业企业为研究对象,提出了市场导向、创新与企业表现关系的假设模型,根据570个服务企业样本数据,利用回归分析及结构方程模型进行了检验,发现中国服务业中市场导向是通过创新的介入与递推而对企业表现发挥作用的。因此,中国服务业企业在市场导向的应用过程中要注意对创新活动的支持,这样才能充分发挥市场导向的作用。     

Static-dynamic uncertainty strategy for a single-item stochastic inventory control problem

We consider a single-stage inventory system facing non-stationary stochastic demand of the customers in a finite planning horizon. Motivated by the practice, the replenishment times need to be determined and frozen once and for all at the beginning of the horizon while decisions on the exact replenishment quantities can be deferred until the replenishment time. This operating scheme is refereed to as a “static-dynamic uncertainty” strategy in the literature [3]. We consider dynamic fixed-ordering and linear end-of-period holding costs, as well as dynamic penalty costs, or service levels. We prove that the optimal ordering policy is a base stock policy for both penalty cost and service level constrained models. Since an exponential exhaustive search based on dynamic programming yields the optimal ordering periods and the associated base stock levels, it is not possible to compute the optimal policy parameters for longer planning horizons. Thus, we develop two heuristics. Numerical experiments show that both heuristics perform well in terms of solution quality and scale-up efficiently; hence, any practically relevant large instance can be solved in reasonable time. Finally, we discuss how our results and heuristics can be extended to handle capacity limitations and minimum order quantity considerations.