The role of other people and emotion for blood donation : an altruistic social service

Blood donation is a critical part of health services with a viable blood supply underpinning an effective health program in any country. Typically blood is provided by voluntary donations from citizens and is therefore reliant on the goodwill and altruistic commitment of donors. In Australia, like many other developed nations, there are many challenges in maintaining a sufficient and sustainable blood supply. The Australian Red Cross Blood Service Donor and Community research group aim is to understand the barriers, motivations and perceptions of donors. Blood donation is a ‘people-processing’ service (Lovelock 1983, Russell-Bennett et al 2013) with the marketing exchange relating to bodily fluid rather than money and is an altruistic social service that has no direct benefit for the customer donor rather the benefit is for other people and society (Kotler and Zaltman 1971). Emotion has been shown to be a motivator and a barrier in a variety of Blood Service studies, this is a key insight that is further explored in the current study. Other key social factors that impact blood donor behavior are classified as social because they involve perceptions of other people’s beliefs and responses (such as moral or subjective norms), peer pressure, other people’s expectations and other people as a form of support. Given that emotions are social phenomena (Parkinson 1996), this study focuses on the role of other people in the blood donation process and how other people relates to the emotional experience of blood donors. We argue in this paper that overcoming emotional barriers to blood donation by leveraging the role of other people will influence low donation rates in Australia. To date, there has been little evidence in service research that identifies. In this paper we explore how other people influence the emotional experience of donors and how, donor emotions create the need for other people as a coping resource.

Just what the doctor ordered? Investigating the impact of health service quality on consumer misbehaviour

The growth in demand and expenditure currently being experienced in the Australian health sector is also accompanied by a rise in dysfunctional customer behaviour, such as verbal abuse and physical violence, perpetrated against health service providers. While service failure and poor recovery are known to trigger consumer misbehaviour, this study investigates whether lower than expected perceived service quality generates cognitive and emotional appraisals that trigger two common forms of misbehaviour: refusal to participate and verbal abuse. Data were collected using a 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment administered via online written survey and analysed using path modelling. The findings indicate that perceptions of service encounter quality have an indirect effect on whether consumers refuse to participate in the service and/or verbally abuse the service provider through the mediating effect of anger.

Small and medium enterprises using software as a service : exploring the different roles of intermediaries

Software as a Service (SaaS) can provide significant benefits to small and medium enterprises (SMEs) due to advantages like ease of access, 7*24 availability, and utility pricing. However, underlying the SaaS delivery model is often the assumption that SMEs will directly interact with the SaaS vendor and use a self-service approach. In practice, we see the rise of SaaS intermediaries who can support SMEs with sourcing and leveraging SaaS. This paper reports on the roles of intermediaries and how they support SMEs with using SaaS. We conducted an empirical study of two SaaS intermediaries and analysed their business models, in particular their value propositions. We identified orientation (technology or customer) and alignment (operational or strategic) as themes for understanding their roles. The contributions of this paper include: (1) the identification and description of SaaS intermediaries for SMEs based on an empirical study and (2) understanding the different roles of SaaS intermediaries, in particular a more basic role based on technology orientation and operational alignment and a more value adding role based on customer orientation and strategic alignment. We propose that SaaS intermediaries can address SaaS adoption and implementation challenges of SMEs by playing a basic role and can also aim to support SMEs in creating business value with SaaS based solutions by playing an added value role.

Design and implementation of unified communications as a service based on the OpenStack cloud environment

Cloud Computing, based on early virtual computer concepts and technologies, is now itself a maturing technology in the marketplace and it has revolutionized the IT industry, being the powerful platform that many businesses are choosing to migrate their in-premises IT services onto. Cloud solution has the potential to reduce the capital and operational expenses associated with deploying IT services on their own. In this study, we have implemented our own private cloud solution, infrastructure as a service (IaaS), using the OpenStack platform with high availability and a dynamic resource allocation mechanism. Besides, we have hosted unified communication as a service (UCaaS) in the underlying IaaS and successfully tested voice over IP (VoIP), video conferencing, voice mail and instant messaging (IM) with clients located at the remote site. The proposed solution has been developed in order to give advice to bussinesses that want to build their own cloud environment, IaaS and host cloud services and applicatons in the cloud. This paper also aims at providing an alternate option for proprietary cloud solutions for service providers to consider.

Nonprofit Service Delivery for Government : Accountability Relationships and Mechanisms

When government purchases social services under contract from a nonprofit organisation, a clear accountability relationship is created. The NPO must give an account for the use of the funds and achievement of outcomes to the funder. This paper explores how accountability is enacted in two different types of funding relationships in Queensland. Support is found for the argument that different relationships have different approaches to accountability.

The feasibility of a community pharmacy delivered in-pharmacy influenza vaccination service

Pharmacist-administered vaccination is a reality in many counties including USA, Canada, UK, Portugal, Ireland and New Zealand. In Australia the role of pharmacist administered vaccination has long been supported by the profession particularly the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia and Pharmacy Guild of Australia, however legislation prohibits this practice in each state and territory. In 2013 the only available in-pharmacy vaccination services are those delivered by an immunization nurse, nurse practitioner or general practitioner.