A comprehensive approach to quality management of intensive care services

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a comprehensive framework for improving intensive care unit performance. Design/methodology/approach – The study introduces a quality management framework by combining cause and effect diagram and logical framework. An intensive care unit was identified for the study on the basis of its performance. The reasons for not achieving the desired performance were identified using a cause and effect diagram with the stakeholder involvement. A logical framework was developed using information from the cause and effect diagram and a detailed project plan was developed. The improvement projects were implemented and evaluated. Findings – Stakeholders identified various intensive care unit issues. Managerial performance, organizational processes and insufficient staff were considered major issues. A logical framework was developed to plan an improvement project to resolve issues raised by clinicians and patients. Improved infrastructure, state-of-the-art equipment, well maintained facilities, IT-based communication, motivated doctors, nurses and support staff, improved patient care and improved drug availability were considered the main project outputs for improving performance. The proposed framework is currently being used as a continuous quality improvement tool, providing a planning, implementing, monitoring and evaluating framework for the quality improvement measures on a sustainable basis. Practical implications – The combined cause and effect diagram and logical framework analysis is a novel and effective approach to improving intensive care performance. Similar approaches could be adopted in any intensive care unit. Originality/value – The paper focuses on a uniform model that can be applied to most intensive care units.

Global HR roles and factors influencing their development:evidence from emerging Indian IT services multinationals

The rapid growth of emerging markets’ multinational companies (MNCs) is a recent phenomenon and, as such, their nature and structure of key management processes, functions, and roles need further examination. While an abundance of low-cost labor is often the starting point of competitive advantage for many of the emerging markets’ MNCs, it is the optimum configuration of people, processes, and technology that defines how they leverage their intangible resources. Based on case studies of four Indian IT services MNCs, involving 51 in-depth interviews of business and human resource (HR) leaders at the corporate and subsidiary levels, we identify five key HR roles—namely, strategic business partner, guardian of culture, builder of global workforce and capabilities, champion of processes, and facilitator of employee development. The analysis also highlights that the HR function in Indian IT service MNCs faces several challenges in consolidating the early gains of internationalization, such as lack of decentralized decision making, developing a global mind-set, localization of the workforce, and developing a global leadership pipeline. Based on our exploratory findings, we propose a framework outlining the global HR roles pursued by emerging IT services MNCs, the factors influencing them, and the challenges facing their HR function for future research.

B2B service brand identity and brand performance:an empirical investigation in the UK’s B2B IT services sector

Purpose – This paper aims to apply the business-to-business (B2B) Service Brand Identity (SBI) scale to empirically assess the influence of service brand identity on brand performance for the first time. Design/methodology/approach – Based on data collected from 421 senior marketing executives, this paper applies the B2B SBI and structural equation modeling to fulfill the above purpose. Findings – Brand personality and human resource initiatives have a positive and significant influence on brand performance. Corporate visual identity, in addition to an employee and client focus, has an insignificant impact on performance. Consistent communications have a negative and significant influence on brand performance. Research limitations/implications – Data were only collected from executives in the UK. This research would benefit from replicative studies. Practical implications – This research empirically establishes the brand management activities that drive brand performance. Originality/value – This is the first empirical study to assess the influence service brand identity has on brand performance.

CloudMPL:a domain specific language for describing management policies for an autonomic cloud infrastructure

To benefit from the advantages that Cloud Computing brings to the IT industry, management policies must be implemented as a part of the operation of the Cloud. Among others, for example, the specification of policies can be used for the management of energy to reduce the cost of running the IT system or also for security policies while handling privacy issues of users. As cloud platforms are large, manual enforcement of policies is not scalable. Hence, autonomic approaches for management policies have recently received a considerable attention. These approaches allow specification of rules that are executed via rule-engines. The process of rules creation starts by the interpretation of the policies drafted by high-rank managers. Then, technical IT staff translate such policies to operational activities to implement them. Such process can start from a textual declarative description and after numerous steps terminates in a set of rules to be executed on a rule engine. To simplify the steps and to bridge the considerable gap between the declarative policies and executable rules, we propose a domain-specific language called CloudMPL. We also design a method of automated transformation of the rules captured in CloudMPL to the popular rule-engine Drools. As the policies are changed over time, code generation will reduce the time required for the implementation of the policies. In addition, using a declarative language for writing the specifications is expected to make the authoring of rules easier. We demonstrate the use of the CloudMPL language into a running example extracted from a management energy consumption case study.