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The purpose of this paper is to identify five quality improvement initiatives for healthcare system leaders, produced by such leaders themselves, and to provide some guidance on how these could be implemented.

A multi-stage modified-Delphi process was used, blending the Delphi approach of iterative information collection, analysis and feedback, with the option for participants to revise their judgments.

The process reached consensus on five initiatives: change information privacy laws; overhaul professional training and work in the workplace; use co-design methods; contract for value and outcomes across health and social care; and use data from across the public and private sectors to improve equity for vulnerable populations and the sickest people.

Information could not be gathered from all participants at each stage of the modified-Delphi process, and the participants did not include patients and families, potentially limiting the scope and nature of input.

The practical implications are a set of findings based on what leaders would bring to a decision-making table in an ideal world if given broad scope and capacity to make policy and organisational changes to improve healthcare systems.

This study adds to the literature a suite of recommendations for healthcare quality improvement, produced by a group of experienced healthcare system leaders from a range of contexts.

The law-oriented short stories and novels of lawyer/English professor John William Corrington are receiving increasing attention from legal scholars. However, no one has analyzed the science fiction screenplays he co-wrote with his wife, Joyce, from a legal perspective. This article analyzes two such screenplays and concludes that they are “Socratic” texts whose narrative structures and epistemological processes work in much the same way that the traditional participatory exchange works in law school. My analysis explores the links between law, allegory and science fiction as intersecting methods to imagine the possibilities for the future.

Lithium disilicate glass-ceramics (LS2 GC) are widely used as dental prosthetics and dental restorations. Based LS2 GC have hardness and translucency similar to that of natural teeth. This study aims to investigate the tribological features of LS2 GC with crystalline volume fraction of 64% and different crystal sizes from 8 µm to 34 µm for different counterparts.

The tribological behavior was investigated using a pin-on-disc tribometer with alumina and tungsten carbide (WC) spheres, applied load of 5 N and sliding speed of 5 cm/s at normal conditions. The coefficient of friction was measured continuously up to 10,000 sliding cycles. The specific wear rate was calculated from tribological and profile measurements. The wear mechanism was investigated by surface morphology analysis.

The coefficient of friction during running-in varied from 0.8 to 1.0 for the alumina counterpart, because of severe wear. Afterwards, it reduced and reached a stationary regime, characterized by a mild wear regime and the formation of a tribolayer formed by the debris. For the WC counterpart, the coefficient of friction curves increased initially with sliding cycles up to a stationary regime. The samples tested against WC presented the lowest specific wear rate (k), and no variation of wear rate with crystal size was observed. For samples tested against the alumina, crystallization and crystal size increased the wear resistance.

This study evaluated the effect of different counterfaces on the tribological properties of the LS2 GC, an important glass-ceramic base for many dental prosthetics and dental restorations, discussing results in light of the contact mechanics. Different specific wear rates, wear regimes and dependence on the glass-ceramic microstructure were observed depending on the counterpart.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/ILT-08-2019-0352/

This paper aims to identify a manufacturer’s abilities to develop, build, sell and deliver Internet of Things (IoT) services.

This paper is a qualitative comparative case method that uses multiple sources of data, including executive interviews and secondary data, to understand a manufacturer’s IoT capabilities.

Five strategic IoT capabilities were identified: digital business model development, scalable solution platform building, value selling, value delivery and business intelligence and measurement.

The main limitations are related to the qualitative research method applied. The results are applicable mainly to relatively large and global manufacturers.

Managers responsible for solution business development can apply the developed model to acquire and manage IoT specific resources, processes and capabilities.

Existing studies have not addressed the IoT-specific resources, processes and capabilities that manufacturers’ possess. This is one of the first studies to conceptualize how these capabilities are used.

Although scholars highlighted the need to close the interactive marketing gap and enhanced understanding of willingness to pay more in settings where customer participation in the service delivery process is paramount, research addressing this issue is scare. This study investigates the effect of perceived employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on customer value and willingness to pay more. The study also examines the extent to which customer value mediates the effect of employee commitment and customer involvement on willingness to pay more for banking services.

The analysis was based on a sample of 211 Nigerian bank customers procured through a mall-intercept survey technique. The partial least squares structural equation modelling procedure and the Preacher–Hayes Bootstrapping technique aided hypotheses testing.

This study demonstrates that elements of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement have significant positive effect on the components of customer value. It also shows that customer value components have significant effect on customers' willingness to pay more. Additionally, the study shows that components of customer value mediate the effect of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on willingness to pay more.

The study contributes to closing gaps in interactive marketing literature by uncovering how willingness to pay more for services is influenced by customer perceptions of employee commitment (affective and calculative) service delivery, customer involvement and customer value (hedonic and utilitarian).

It is important for managers to put in place measures that will help them know the kind of commitment cues their employees are emitting to customers as well as levels of customer involvement during service encounters.

This study breaks new ground in three unique ways. First, the study represents the first attempt to examine the combined effect of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on consumer value perceptions. Second, the study also demonstrates that hedonic value has a more pronounced effect on willingness to pay more for banking services than utilitarian value. Finally, the study shows the extent to which customer value (hedonic vs utilitarian) mediates the effect of employee commitment to service delivery and customer involvement on willingness to pay more.

Many psychologists posit that intrinsic motivation generated by personal interest and spontaneous satisfactions is qualitatively different from extrinsic motivation generated by external rewards. However, the contemporary neural understanding of human motivation has been developed almost exclusively based on the neural mechanisms of extrinsic motivation. In neuroscience studies on extrinsic motivation, striatum activity has been consistently observed as the core neural system related to human motivation. Recently, a few studies have started examining the neural system behind intrinsic motivation. Though these studies have found that striatum activity is crucial for the generation of intrinsic motivation, the unique neural basis of intrinsic motivation has not yet been fully identified. I suggest that insular cortex activity, known to be related to intrinsic enjoyment and satisfaction, is a unique neural component of intrinsic motivation. In this chapter, I addressed the theoretical background to and empirical evidence for this postulation.

The goal of this exploratory study is to establish an explanatory model and corresponding instrument to help further understand, and conduct research in the area of supply chain management (SCM). Constructs pertaining to SCM assimilation, SCM outcomes, and overall firm performance are operationally defined in terms of their dimensions and items. The business literature is utilized to help define the constructs and to generate potential measurement items. The scales are then purified and a preliminary test for predictive validity is performed.

The purpose of this paper is to explain the discrepancy between ethnohistorical accounts on north-western Kalahari San of the nineteenth to early twentieth century and recent ethnographic accounts, the former depicting the San as intensely warlike, the latter as basically peaceable.

Review of historical, ethnohistorical and ethnographic source material (reports, journal articles, monographs).

The warlike ways of the nineteenth-century Kalahari San were reactions to settler intrusion, domination and encapsulation. This was met with resistance, a process that led to the rapid politicization and militarization, socially and ideationally, of San groups in the orbit of the intruders (especially the “tribal zone” they created). It culminated in internecine warfare, specifically raiding and feuding, amongst San bands and tribal groupings.

While the nineteenth-century Kalahari San were indeed warlike and aggressive, toward both intruders and one another, this fact does not warrant the conclusion that these “simple” hunter-gatherer people have an agonistic predisposition. Instead, of being integral to their sociality, bellicosity is historically contingent. In the absence of the historical circumstances that fuel San aggression and warfare, as was the case after and before the people's exposure and resistance to hegemonic intruders, San society and ethos, in conformity with the social structure and value orientation of simple, egalitarian band societies, is basically peaceful.

A setting-the-record-straight corrective on current misunderstandings and misinformation on hunter-gatherer warfare.

The purpose is to examine the relationship between entrepreneurs’ exit strategies and modes of entry. The topic of exit strategies in the context of approaching retirement warrants further attention.

We apply logistic regression to analyse 1,192 responses to an online survey of firms with entrepreneurs aged over 55.

Family successors are more likely to choose family succession and buyers to choose to sell, but the association between founding and exit mode cannot be confirmed. Firm size is also significant. Our findings suggest that entry and exit via a business transfer are linked. Entrepreneurs might be influenced by their form of entry when choosing their exit strategy.

The data were collected from a single European country, limiting generalisation. Future research should incorporate intervening variables not controlled for here, such as, entrepreneurial experience. Future studies should also seek to test the existence of imprinting directly, as it is implied rather than verified here.

If the entry mode has a lasting effect on the entrepreneur as our results suggest, thus influencing the exit strategy selected, entrepreneurs could benefit from greater awareness of the imprinting mechanism. Increasing awareness of imprinted biases could unlock the benefits of exit strategies previously overlooked.

The study is the first to consider sale, family succession and liquidation as exit strategies in relation to the original entry mode of ageing owners. It contributes to the understanding of exit strategies of ageing entrepreneurs and proposes using entrepreneurial learning and imprinting as lenses to clarify the phenomenon.