Profiling purchasing skills by purchase type : a survey of buyers in Taiwan

This paper presents the results of an empirical study of purchasing skills and how they vary by type of purchase. Building on the purchasing portfolio approach, purchase type was defined using 10 internally oriented, product- related dimensions, and 8 externally oriented, supply-related dimensions. Based on these dimensions, experienced purchasing personnel described a specific purchase and profiled the skills required for effective performance in purchasing that item. Cluster analysis of the 72 valid responses provided three distinct groups of purchasing situations, which were labelled strategic, tactical and routine purchase types. Of the 33 skills identified from prior literature, 24 were found to differ significantly (p>0.05) across purchase type clusters. For each cluster, the purchase situation and skills profile are described. Results show that, as product and market complexity and risk increase, both more purchasing skills are needed, and their importance for successful performance increases. Further analysis through pairwise comparisons of the clusters reveals more detailed insights. Suggestions for refining this survey tool and for its potential application in companies are discussed.

Emerging of human factor in risk analysis of home care service

Risk management in healthcare represents a group of various complex actions, implemented to improve the quality of healthcare services and guarantee the patients safety. Risks cannot be eliminated, but it can be controlled with different risk assessment methods derived from industrial applications and among these the Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) is a largely used methodology. The main purpose of this work is the analysis of failure modes of the Home Care (HC) service provided by local healthcare unit of Naples (ASL NA1) to focus attention on human and non human factors according to the organization framework selected by WHO. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2014.