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The purpose of this paper is to analyze issues pertaining to maintenance performance and to develop a framework that addresses challenges of maintenance management of an international lube blending plant in Malaysia. This study capitalizes on the contribution of selected maintenance department stakeholders from within the plant to develop “tailor-made” intervention strategies for maintenance performance improvement.

The study employed two focus group workshops to ascertain issues facing the maintenance department and identify intervention strategies. The final phase of the study employed fuzzy Delphi method (FDM) to prioritize and rank the intervention strategies for performance improvement.

The first focus group workshop identified 106 issues which could be classified under aspects of spare parts (n=8), equipment (n=14), communication (n=12), non-technical resource (n=8), health, safety and environment (n=4), technical skills and recruitment (n=27), and handling and procedures (n=33). Based on these findings, the second focus group revealed 28 significant performance initiatives to improve the issues identified for maintenance performance improvement. Through the FDM, 18 performance initiatives were ranked and prioritized. Performance improvement through leadership category leads the overall initiatives followed by equipment maintenance management, talent management, work environment and vendor management.

Interesting implications for maintenance management theory would be realized if future research were able to demonstrate that certain aspects or dimensions were related to high performing plant maintenance, and not with low performing ones. Apparently, the present study is not able to provide this clue because it is merely a case study of a single company.

As ILBP attempts to implement maintenance performance improvement, it is pertinent for the management to understand the relevant performance issues and concerns. The appropriate enablers have been identified and must be initiated to chart the strategic role of their maintenance organization.

This study contributes toward further understanding of the maintenance performance management. It has demonstrated the need of organizations to make infrastructural investments such as quality leadership, employee training and empowerment, to name a few, to strategically enhance their maintenance capabilities.

This study uses the FDM for the decision-making process of improving plant maintenance performance. It adds value to the body of knowledge of plant operation management.

This paper aims to evaluate the dietary advice for cardiovascular health in UK running magazines.

A qualitative and quantitative content analysis was carried out on 12 issues (2014/2015) of Men’s Running (MR), Runner’s World (RW) and Women’s Running (WR). Coding of content took place into three themes: diet information, format and cardiovascular health.

Dietary advice comprised 17, 18 and 21 per cent of content in MR, RW and WR, respectively. A Mediterranean dietary pattern (e.g. fruit, vegetables, nuts and seeds, wholegrains and legumes, oily fish) was recommended for cardiovascular health and lowering of BP and plasma cholesterol. Single components of this dietary pattern were emphasised combined with advice to alter fat intake and increase intake of antioxidant nutrients and polyphenols, while advice to restrict salt was scarce. There was minimal emphasis on weight control. Information was often presented as single-page compilations of multiple headlines and snippets. Lexical imperatives and magisterial vocabulary connoted learned expertise and citation of experts and journals was common.

Future research may qualitatively investigate how readers interpret and make use of the nutrition information and dietary advice provided in these magazines. A critical question would be to address whether these dietary messages lead to cardio-protective dietary behaviour.

Improved journalistic reporting of emerging nutritional science is also needed. Magazine editors and journalists need to follow reporting guidelines for science and provide more nuanced information.

This research is the first to describe the content and style of dietary content for cardiovascular health in running magazines.

This study provides insight into factors surrounding knowledge reuse through electronic knowledge repositories (EKR).

A multi-theoretical framework is proposed that views knowledge reuse from both socio-technical and expectation confirmation model perspectives. Survey data are used to test associated hypotheses derived from the literature.

Results confirm the explanatory power of this approach to predict greater knowledge reuse and greater continuance of use.

Results suggest social and technical factors modelled interdependently affect knowledge reuse and lead to greater performance, knowledge sharing and continuance of use.

Practical and managerial recommendations for enhancing enablers of knowledge reuse via EKR are offered.

This study models enablers to knowledge reuse and resulting downstream effects on organizational outcomes. It provides an original framework for studying knowledge reuse within an EKR or knowledge management system perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to explore why innovative service ecosystems scale up, using a service-dominant logic lens. The focus is on identifying the key drivers of the scaling-up process as the basis for a new conceptual framework on the scaling up of service innovations.

An inductive research design is used to zoom in on two innovative service ecosystems, Eataly and KidZania, to identify the key drivers that can explain why innovations scale up. For both companies, the triangulation of semi-structured interviews, archival sources and in-store observations is used as complementary data sets. Multiple investigators and multiple coders have been involved in the data collection, coding process and analysis.

An extended conceptualization of service innovation is obtained, grounded in a framework of four drivers of scaling up: effectuation as the basis for creating the value proposition; sensing and adapting to local contexts; the reconfiguration and alignment of resources and forms for collaboration between actors; and values’ resonance.

This study represents one of the first empirical investigations of the key drivers of the scaling up process of service innovations. The paper contributes with a conceptualization of service innovation and why scaling-up processes emerge, emphasizing the existence of multiple constellations of four drivers.

Sustainable mobility and collaborative consumption are debated issues in the literature. In this field, car sharing (CS) represents a growing tendency that attracts interest by academicians for its potential positive impact on sustainability. This study aims to understand the main drivers of CS usage, unveiling the role of service quality and the possible inhibitors.

Based on theoretical assumptions in the literature, the authors developed a theoretical framework that aims at understanding the main antecedents of CS usage. An empirical investigation involving the city of Rome (Italy) was performed. The study presents a qualitative and quantitative survey, while the proposed theoretical model has been tested through structural equation modelling statistical techniques.

The findings show that usefulness positively affects the intention to use CS services. Moreover, the green attitude and expected service quality indirectly influence the intention to use CS services impacting perceived usefulness. The results show that the expected service quality has a strong influence on usefulness, whereas green attitude has a weaker influence on usefulness. The intention to use CS services is directly influenced by the usefulness and inhibitors that affect it negatively.

The originality of this paper lies in the fact that this study discloses the main antecedents of the intention to use CS services, emphasizing the role of service quality. This study provides fruitful insights to policy and decision-makers to understand how to improve the CS usage in the urban transport system of the city of Rome. It suggests developing a higher level of service quality in the vehicles, suitable technological applications and effective communication as well as on overcoming its main inhibitors.

The linkage between internal and external satisfaction is an understudied topic in the service field. This study aims to address this gap by proposing an original research model, the service excellence chain (SEC), that connects the internal and external perspectives by conjoining performance-excellence models and the service-profit-chain approach. Theoretical assumptions and quantitative measures are proposed by using advanced statistical techniques.

The SEC is investigated through an empirical study in the healthcare sector, focusing on an Italian hospital and involving two of its core units. Qualitative and quantitative approaches were used. First, internal and external customer satisfaction were separately tested through structural equation modeling. The linkage between internal and external satisfaction is then proposed by mathematically defining a synthetic index, the internal and external customer satisfaction index (IEGSI), modeled through Bayesian networks (BNs) and object-oriented BNs to provide an overall measure able to predict organizational improvement.

The distinct measured models show good internal validity and adequate fit both for patients' and employees' perspectives. The IEGSI allows rigorously connecting internal and external satisfaction by developing conjoint scenarios for organizational improvement.

This study proposes the SEC model as an innovative way to connect internal and external satisfaction. The findings can be useful both for private and public organizations and may provide several useful insights for healthcare managers as well as for policy-makers in relation to developing strategies for improving service quality.

The issues surrounding the scholarship on children-inclusive events management are explored in depth to provide a context for this chapter. Focus then turns to the city of Winchester in the United Kingdom as a case study for potential events aimed at this age group. Through a synthesis of the findings from a thorough new research study along with emerging theories in narrative and storytelling as experience co-creation, a proposed design for a new event is put forward. It is hoped that this approach in the academic literature will encourage other researchers to include innovative proposals in their synthesis and conclusions. Finally, additional considerations of integrating city branding with a wider regional branding are explored through ethnobotany. Lessons are drawn from an example of brand management based on a city event for children in Scotland.

The paper is centred through an examination of a short piece of recorded talk between managers and shop stewards within a UK National Health Service (NHS) Trust, relating to the manner in which one of the shop stewards attempted to get the managers to accede to a request he made for changes to the wording of a section of the Trust’s disciplinary procedure. In examining this piece of talk, the paper first contextualises the Trust through the decentralisation process of the early 1990s. The decentralisation process clearly did not introduce formal negotiation into NHS units, but instead increased the scope of formal negotiation encounters. The paper argues that there was an increased importance for persuasion as the need to gain others’ assent on industrial relations matters at the local level was significantly increased. The paper analyses the dynamics of one particular negotiating encounter between two managers and two shop stewards. In analysing this, the paper focuses through rhetoric. In coming through a rhetorical framework, the paper highlights the need for managers, when negotiating, to be alert to the implied elements of the arguments of those across the negotiating table. Concludes by also understanding the rhetoric of the encounter in the light of the marketisation of the NHS during the 1990s.

Because the success of m-payment services depends on the enablers and barriers that affect user satisfaction, the present research explores the effects of perceived value and sacrifices on users' satisfaction with m-payment services. The predicted relationships among perceived value, perceived sacrifices, users' satisfaction, continuance intention, word-of-mouth (WOM), shopping effectiveness, quality of life (QOL) and stickiness were established based on the mobile technology acceptance model (MTAM) and the value-based adoption model (VAM).

A representative data sample of 430 Egyptian banking clients was analyzed to test the hypotheses using partial least squares-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).

The findings revealed that all perceived value constructs significantly positively affect users' satisfaction. Moreover, all perceived sacrifice constructs significantly negatively affect users' satisfaction. Users' satisfaction, in turn, has a significant positive effect on continuance intention, WOM, shopping effectiveness, QOL and stickiness with m-payment services.

This is the first study to examine several levels of m-payment outcomes, including m-payment, consumer and bank outcomes, based on the integration of MTAM and VAM models.