Staff rostering in call centers providing employee transportation

We address the staff rostering problem in call centers with the goal of balancing operational cost, agent satisfaction and customer service objectives. In metropolitan cities such as Istanbul and Mumbai, call centers provide the transportation of their staff so that shuttle costs constitute a significant part of the operational costs. We develop a mixed integer programming model that incorporates the shuttle requirements at the beginning and end of the shifts into the agent-shift assignment decisions, while considering the skill sets of the agents, and other constraints due to workforce regulations and agent preferences. We analyze model solutions for a banking call center under various management priorities to understand the interactions among the conflicting objectives. We show that considering transportation costs as well as agent preferences in agent-shift assignments provides significant benefits in terms of both cost savings and employee satisfaction.     

Bittersweet and Paradoxical

The American Red Cross is the most active nonprofit organization involved in disaster planning and response in the United States. The organization deployed nearly 50,000 volunteers to provide essential support to victims of some 125,000 domestic disasters, including home fires, hurricanes, wildfires, and floods, in a recent two‐year period. This study asks how American Red Cross disaster response volunteer experiences function to cultivate satisfaction and, at the other end of the spectrum, the kind of dissatisfaction that leads people to quit; it pays particular attention to ways in which volunteer management shapes dissatisfaction and fatigue because of implications for volunteer retention. Paradoxically, the Red Cross facilitates the highly satisfying act of helping victims, but volunteers feel dissatisfied when management practices get in the way of helping. The study suggests voluntary organizations that rely on skilled, long‐term volunteers to deliver services should evaluate and strengthen their communication strategies, recognition practices, and support systems for volunteers in distress.     

国际航运中心航运服务信息整合研究

以航运高端服务为特征的伦敦和以航运基本服务为标志的新加坡、汉堡等国际航运中心都具有完善的航运服务信息整合能力,本质上也是国际航运信息整合中心。与发达国家相比,上海在国际航运中心航运信息整合范围、信息平台集成水平、权威信息发布和政策自由度等方面存在明显差距,未来需要尽快明确整合路径、落实保障措施。     

Exotic Place,White Space: Racialized Volunteer Spaces in Honduras

In every year between 2004 and 2012, more than 800,000 Americans reported volunteering internationally (Lough 2013 ). These volunteers are overwhelmingly white (McBride and Lough 2008 ) and entering a largely nonwhite and developing world. This study starts by questioning how racial status informs volunteer/volunteer tourist interactions, both with locals and with other volunteers, in a global context. In‐depth interviews with 23 missionaries, teachers, and volunteers from the United States and Canada reveal that (1) international volunteering is largely motivated by romantic and exotic understandings of the Global South and (2) in spite of a stated interest in cultural immersion, participants’ notions of their whiteness guided their perceptions of Hondurans and their actions as they sought out and retreated to white spaces protected from Honduran influence. These findings further the work of those who have argued first world travelers have homogenized spaces on reserve, by demonstrating that whiteness can be the basis for the construction and maintenance of protected spaces in predominantly nonwhite countries.     

An integrated system of engaging social workers and community volunteers in social care for the elderly: case studies in Taiwan

Integrating volunteers into social care is widely expected but rarely successful in practice. This paper discusses how the Community Care Centre Plan organising community volunteers to provide services to the elderly in Taiwan. This plan successfully integrated social workers and volunteers in a national system to offer service in local communities, showing a systemic practice of community care and a unique case of community-based and volunteer-based service. The purposes of this paper are to introduce the programme design and to understand how to integrate the mission of social workers and volunteers’ performance. The governmental policy and requirements, the role of social workers and the provision of voluntary community service which contributed to form the system were examined in this paper.     

"中心"的心理暗示——视觉审美研究

具有中心感的视觉形象能给人以强大的心理统摄力,并对审美产物的最终形成产生决定性影响。将这种中心感定义为一种能明确感知的、直观的整体视觉特征,并将其丰富的心理暗示划分为三个方面,即归属感、等级感和稳定感。归属感代表着人们对母体、源头等身心归宿的强烈回归愿望,等级感则与归属感一脉相承,其在人们心中高于它物的崇高地位使之成为权利象征,一些皇权建筑形象的选择就源于此。而稳定感则顺利完成了从空间概念到时间概念的转换,在审美过程中常作为永恒的象征出现。通过这三方面对"中心"的详尽分析,揭示出视觉审美研究的核心问题应该是欣赏者的心理分析,并期望以此研究方式对其作出一些有益探索。     

基于系统论的行政区划规划研究——以海南省为例

依据系统规划论,对海南国际旅游岛战略规划中的行政区划的某些技术经济问题进行量化分析研究。通过系统分析海南国际旅游岛战略规划对海南经济社会的影响,重构海南行政区划系统,增设区域、区位中心城市琼中市和陵水市,扩充区域、区位中心城市人口容量,提升海南省城市化率水平。提出建设海南热带雨林生态旅游区设想,为加快海南国际旅游岛建设,促进经济欠发达的琼中、西部区域的旅游业发展指明了方向。     

“以病人为中心”的深层次思考

“以病人为中心”是医院管理道德和医患关系道德的核心话语,其基本理念是“以人为本”。在医患关系道德建设过程中贯彻“以人为本”理念,一是要“以病人为中心”,这是医患关系道德“以人为本”的核心,二是要“以医务人员为主体”,这是实现“以病人为中心”的关键,而且要将这两者结合起来,共同指导医患关系道德建设。“以人为本”理念的贯彻,对于我们建立良好的医患关系,促进医疗卫生事业的健康发展具有重要的现实意义。     

发挥管理中枢作用积极推进教学改革

教务处是学校教学管理的管理中枢。教学管理兼有行政管理和学术管理双重功能 ;更新教育思想、转变教育观念 ,抓好教学基本建设 ,深化教学改革 ,是提高教学质量的基础 ;加强教学管理科学化、规范化、现代化建设 ,是提高日常教学管理质量和效率的基础 ;强化质量意识 ,加强素质教育 ,是今后教学管理的根本出发点 ,也是时代发展的要求     

厦门动漫文化中心建设及产业发展建议

现今,厦门动漫文化产业处于初级阶段,产业链中的每个环节都存在一定的问题。根据当前厦门市动漫文化中心建设及产业发展现状,提出了几点建议：动漫人才的培养,除鼓励和支持学校培养外,采用＂引进来,走出去＂方法,完善师资力量;在动漫文化中心建设方面,以原创的视觉形象为基础,打造原创产品、营造动漫环境,逐步完成动漫文化创意产业园的建设;在动漫产业链的打造过程中,需注重资本力——融资问题、市场推广力、政府扶持力与产权保护力等方面;在动漫产业与本土文化的结合上,要将本土文化融入动漫产业链的每个环节中,以中国特色吸引更多的市场注意力。