Will you tolerate this? The impact of affective commitment on complaint intention and postrecovery behavior

Successful complaint management primarily depends on customers' willingness to voice their complaints and on companies' ability to adequately deal with these complaints. This article investigates the impact of one relationship characteristic in the complaint management process: affective commitment. Based on two studies, the authors investigate whether affective commitment moderates the impact of complaint barriers on complaint intention (a) and whether it moderates the link between complaint satisfaction and purchase behavior after the complaint (b). Results show that affectively committed customers exhibit higher complaint intention irrespective of the level of complaint barriers. Furthermore, affectively committed customers display little change in their postrecovery behavior, even after a service failure followed by an unsatisfactory recovery attempt. It seems that these customers are tolerant and want to help the provider improve their business. Affective commitment seems to amplify willingness to help the company by means of voicing dissatisfaction despite considerable efforts in doing so. Moreover, affective commitment buffers the negative effects of service failures on postrecovery behavior. Findings have important implications for managers. They highlight the necessity to measure customers' affective commitment. Based on that, tailored complaint systems can be designed, which help in achieving a more effective allocation of resources for customer recovery.

A beosztás és a nemek hatása a változások érzékelésére egy lean projekt tapasztalatai egy magyar autóipari beszállítónál (Efficient possibilities of the customer complaints: compensation and apology)

Tanulmányukban a szerzők egy magyar tulajdonú autóipari beszállító lean (továbbiakban karcsú) átalakulását vizsgáljuk. Bár az új rendszer bevezetése alig több mint egy éve kezdődött el a vállalatnál, mégis a rövid idő ellenére komoly eredményekről számolhatnak be. Különösen látványos a pénzügyi mutatók és a vevői elégedettség területén elért javulás. Kutatásuk célja kettős volt: (1) megvizsgálni, hogyan érzékelik a vezetők és a beosztottak a változásokat, valamint (2) összehasonlítani a vállalat két üzemében dolgozó nők és férfiak átalakítással kapcsolatos reakcióit és érzeteit. Az eredmények alapján elmondható, hogy a vezetők és a beosztottak, csakúgy, mint a két nem képviselői, nagyon eltérően gondolkodnak a változásokról és az átalakítás sikerének hátteréről. Eredményeik tükrében megállapítható, hogy a vizsgált szervezetnél a női munkavállalóknál a hit, a férfiaknál az elkötelezettség az a tényező, amely leginkább hatással van a sikerérzetre. A kutatás tapasztalatait felhasználva tanácsokat fogalmaznak meg a karcsú menedzsment sikeres bevezetésével kapcsolatosan. ______________ Relatively little research attention has been given to what happens after service failure, how the organizations respond to the failure and how this response affects customers’ subsequent behaviours and attitudes. This article proposes to take an in-depth look at the different organizational responses to customer complaints. On the basis of the equity theory the concept of justice has been used that involves distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Using 2x2x2 factorial design experiment based on scenarios the main findings of the research is that interactional justice (explanation and apology) is as important as distributive justice (compensation). On the other hand the result is dependent on the failure type: different recovery effort is efficient in the case of outcome or process failure.

A hatékony panaszkezelés lehetőségei: kompenzáció és bocsánatkérés (Efficient possibilities of the customer complaints: compensation and apology)

A szerzők cikkükben a panaszkezelés hatékonyságát vizsgálják, kutatási módszerük a szcenáriókon alapuló kísérleti módszertan. Eredményeik alapján elmondható, hogy a panaszkezelés hatásaként vizsgált elégedettség és lojalitás – előzetes hipotéziseiknek megfelelően – nemcsak a kompenzáció nagyságától függ, hanem lényeges az is, hogy a folyamat során milyen hangnemben történik a hiba kiigazítása. Elemzéseik azt is alátámasztják, hogy a hiba típusától is függ, hogy a kompenzáció vagy az őszinte bocsánatkérés-e a célravezetőbb. ____________ Relatively little research attention has been given to what happens after service failure, how the organizations respond to the failure and how this response affects customers’ subsequent behaviours and attitudes. This article proposes to take an in-depth look at the different organizational responses to customer complaints. On the basis of the equity theory the concept of justice has been used that involves distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Using 2x2x2 factorial design experiment based on scenarios the main findings of the research is that interactional justice (explanation and apology) is as important as distributive justice (compensation). On the other hand the result is dependent on the failure type: different recovery effort is efficient in the case of outcome or process failure.

Improvement of link failure restoration utilising multi-protocol label switching (MPLS) as a means to maintain quality of service (QOS)

This paper proposes a practical approach to the enhancement of Quality of Service (QoS) routing by means of providing alternative or repair paths in the event of a breakage of a working path. The proposed scheme guarantees that every Protected Node (PN) is connected to a multi-repair path such that no further failure or breakage of single or double repair paths can cause any simultaneous loss of connectivity between an ingress node and an egress node. Links to be protected in an MPLS network are predefined and a Label Switched path (LSP) request involves the establishment of a working path. The use of multi-protection paths permits the formation of numerous protection paths allowing greater flexibility. Our analysis examined several methods including single, double and multi-repair routes and the prioritization of signals along the protected paths to improve the Quality of Service (QoS), throughput, reduce the cost of the protection path placement, delay, congestion and collision. Results obtained indicated that creating multi-repair paths and prioritizing packets reduces delay and increases throughput in which case the delays at the ingress/egress LSPs were low compared to when the signals had not been classified. Therefore the proposed scheme provided a means to improve the QoS in path restoration in MPLS using available network resources. Prioritizing the packets in the data plane has revealed that the amount of traffic transmitted using a medium and low priority Label Switch Paths (LSPs) does not have any impact on the explicit rate of the high priority LSP in which case the problem of a knock-on effect is eliminated.

Defining failure in the nonprofit organization: The case of four human service agencies

Private nonprofit human service organizations provide a spectrum of services that aim to resolve societal problems. Their failure may leave needed and desired services unprovided or not provided sufficiently to meet public demand. However, the concept of organizational failure has not been examined for the nonprofit organization. This research addresses the deficiency in the literatures of organization failure and nonprofit organizations.^ An eight category typology, developed from a review of the current literature and findings from expert interviews, is initially presented to define nonprofit organization failure. A multiple case study design is used to test the typology in four nonprofit human service delivery agencies. The case analysis reduces the typology to five types salient to nonprofit organization failure: input failure, legitimacy failure, adaptive failure, management failure and leadership failure.^ The resulting five category typology is useful to both theory builders and nonprofit practitioners. For theory development, the interaction of the failure types extends the literature and lays a foundation for a theory of nonprofit organization failure that diffuses management and leadership across all of the failure types, highlights management and leadership failure as collective functions shared by paid staff and the volunteer board of directors, and emphasizes the importance of organization legitimacy.^ From a practical perspective, the typology provides a tool for diagnosing failure in the nonprofit organization. Using the management indicators developed for the typology, a checklist of the warning signals of potential failure, emphasizing the key types of management and leadership, offers nonprofit decision makers a priori examination of an organization's propensity for failure. ^

Failure assessments of corroded pipelines with axial defects using stress-based criteria: Numerical studies and verification analyses

Conventional procedures used to assess the integrity of corroded piping systems with axial defects generally employ simplified failure criteria based upon a plastic collapse failure mechanism incorporating the tensile properties of the pipe material. These methods establish acceptance criteria for defects based on limited experimental data for low strength structural steels which do not necessarily address specific requirements for the high grade steels currently used. For these cases, failure assessments may be overly conservative or provide significant scatter in their predictions, which lead to unnecessary repair or replacement of in-service pipelines. Motivated by these observations, this study examines the applicability of a stress-based criterion based upon plastic instability analysis to predict the failure pressure of corroded pipelines with axial defects. A central focus is to gain additional insight into effects of defect geometry and material properties on the attainment of a local limit load to support the development of stress-based burst strength criteria. The work provides an extensive body of results which lend further support to adopt failure criteria for corroded pipelines based upon ligament instability analyses. A verification study conducted on burst testing of large-diameter pipe specimens with different defect length shows the effectiveness of a stress-based criterion using local ligament instability in burst pressure predictions, even though the adopted burst criterion exhibits a potential dependence on defect geometry and possibly on material`s strain hardening capacity. Overall, the results presented here suggests that use of stress-based criteria based upon plastic instability analysis of the defect ligament is a valid engineering tool for integrity assessments of pipelines with axial corroded defects. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Acute liver failure in children: A regional experience

Objective: To review the outcome of acute liver failure (ALF) and the effect of liver transplantation in children in Australia. Methodology: A retrospective review was conducted of all paediatric patients referred with acute liver failure between 1985 and 2000 to the Queensland Liver Transplant Service, a paediatric liver transplant centre based at the Royal Children's Hospital, Brisbane, that is one of three paediatric transplant centres in Australia. Results: Twenty-six patients were referred with ALF. Four patients did not require transplantation and recovered with medical therapy while two were excluded because of irreversible neurological changes and died. Of the 20 patients considered for transplant, three refused for social and/or religious reasons, with 17 patients listed for transplantation. One patient recovered spontaneously and one died before receiving a transplant. There were 15 transplants of which 40% (6/15) were < 2 years old. Sixty-seven per cent (10/15) survived > 1 month after transplantation. Forty per cent (6/15) survived more than 6 months after transplant. There were only four long-term survivors after transplant for ALF (27%). Overall, 27% (6/22) of patients referred with ALF survived. Of the 16 patients that died, 44% (7/16) were from neurological causes. Most of these were from cerebral oedema but two patients transplanted for valproate hepatotoxicity died from neurological disease despite good graft function. Conclusions: Irreversible neurological disease remains a major cause of death in children with ALF. We recommend better patient selection and early referral and transfer to a transplant centre before onset of irreversible neurological disease to optimize outcome of children transplanted for ALF.

Seasonal variation in hospitalizations due to heart failure in Niterói city, Southeastern Brazil

The objective of the study was to describe seasonality of hospitalizations for heart failure in tropical climate as it has been described in cold climates. Seasonal Auto-regressive Integrated Moving-Average model was applied to time-series data of heart failure hospitalizations between 1996 and 2004 in Niteroi (Southeastern Brazil), collected from the Brazilian National Health Service Database. The standard seasonal variation was obtained by means of moving-average filtering and averaging data. The lowest and the highest annual hospital admissions were 507 (1997) and 849 (2002), respectively; the lowest and the highest monthly rates were 419 (December) and 681 (October), respectively. Peak admission rates were seen during the fall and winter. Although weak, the seasonality observed indicates that slight variations result in increased hospitalizations for heart failure.

Evaluation of the six-minute walk test in patients with chronic heart failure associated with Chagas' disease and systemic arterial hypertension

INTRODUCTION: To evaluate physical capacity as determined by the six-minute walk test (6MWT) in patients with chronic heart failure due to Chagas' disease associated with systemic arterial hypertension (Chagas-SAH). METHODS: A total of 98 patients routinely followed at the Cardiomyopathy Outpatient Service were recruited. Of these, 60 (61%) were diagnosed with Chagas disease and 38 (39%) with Chagas-SAH. RESULTS: The distance walked during 6 min was 357.9 ±98 m for Chagas-SAH patients and 395.8 ± 121m for Chagas cardiomyopathy patients (p >0.05). In patients with Chagas-SAH, a negative correlation occurred between the 6MWT and the total score of the Minnesota Living with Heart Failure Questionnaire (r= -0.51; p=0.001). No other correlations were determined between 6MWT values and continuous variables in patients with Chagas-SAH. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the 6MWT in Chagas-SAH patients are similar to those verified in Chagas cardiomyopathy patients with chronic heart failure. Coexistence of SAH does not seem to affect the functional capacity of Chagas cardiomyopathy patients with chronic heart failure.

Enhanced multi-layer protection in multi-service GMPLS networks

This paper focuses on QoS routing with protection in an MPLS network over an optical layer. In this multi-layer scenario each layer deploys its own fault management methods. A partially protected optical layer is proposed and the rest of the network is protected at the MPLS layer. New protection schemes that avoid protection duplications are proposed. Moreover, this paper also introduces a new traffic classification based on the level of reliability. The failure impact is evaluated in terms of recovery time depending on the traffic class. The proposed schemes also include a novel variation of minimum interference routing and shared segment backup computation. A complete set of experiments proves that the proposed schemes are more efficient as compared to the previous ones, in terms of resources used to protect the network, failure impact and the request rejection ratio

Financial constraints and the failure of innovation projects

Theoretical and empirical approaches have stressed the existence of financial constraints in innovative activities of firms. This paper analyses the role of financial obstacles on the likelihood of abandoning an innovation project. Although a large number of innovation projects are abandoned before their completion, the empirical evidence has focused on the determinants of innovation while failed projects have received little attention. Our analysis differentiates between internal and external barriers on the probability of abandoning a project and we examine whether the effects are different depending on the stage of the innovation process. In the empirical analysis carried out for a panel data of potential innovative Spanish firms for the period 2004-2010, we use a bivariate probit model to take into account the simultaneity of financial constraints and the decision to abandon an innovation project. Our results show that financial constraints most affect the probability of abandoning an innovation project during the concept stage and that low-technological manufacturing and non-KIS service sectors are more sensitive to financial constraints.

Financial constraints and the failure of innovation projects

Theoretical and empirical approaches have stressed the existence of financial constraints in innovative activities of firms. This paper analyses the role of financial obstacles on the likelihood of abandoning an innovation project. Although a large number of innovation projects are abandoned before their completion, the empirical evidence has focused on the determinants of innovation while failed projects have received little attention. Our analysis differentiates between internal and external barriers on the probability of abandoning a project and we examine whether the effects are different depending on the stage of the innovation process. In the empirical analysis carried out for a panel data of potential innovative Spanish firms for the period 2004-2010, we use a bivariate probit model to take into account the simultaneity of financial constraints and the decision to abandon an innovation project. Our results show that financial constraints most affect the probability of abandoning an innovation project during the concept stage and that low-technological manufacturing and non-KIS service sectors are more sensitive to financial constraints. Keywords: barriers to innovation, failure of innovation projects, financial constraints JEL Classifications: O31, D21

Service Blueprinting in Irregularity Service Improvement, case Swissport Finland Ltd

The trend of concentrating to core competencies leads to outsourcing of non-core activities. One such activity is logistics, where the responsibility is given to third-party service providers. This means the service provider acts as an intermediary between the buyer and the end customer. This thesis concentrates on depicting the operational environment of one such service provider, Swissport Finland Ltd, and the improvement of their checked baggage irregularity service. The tools used for this work were service blueprinting, an illustrative method for service mapping, and failure modes and effects analysis. The theoretical part of the thesis offers a framework for using these tools for logistics services, while the empirical part consists of a study mostly qualitative in nature. Action research method was used for the service improvement research. According to the results of this study the combination of service blueprinting and FMEA can be used successfully for irregularity service improvement. The most important result was an enhanced irregularity process that has been found to alleviate earlier problems.

Microenterprise success and failure factors

The purpose of this study is to identify factors contributory to success or failure of a microenterprise. Microenterprise is an enterprise with less than10 employees. About 99 % of all Finnish enterprises fall in this category. Earlier studies do not provide a comprehensive view on microenterprise success and failure factors. The theoretical part discusses the definition of success and failure, previous research and results already established about the topic and categories of business environment. The empirical part is founded on quantitative survey results from 204 Finnish microenterprises. The questions of the survey were based on previous surveys, literature and intuition. Both success and failure factors were enquired. Summary of the results was made and the results were compared among successful and unsuccessful enterprises. In open-end questions, the most important factors mentioned to affect enterprise performance positively were "Employees", "Customers" and "Skills, knowledge, education and experience." The most important factors affecting enterprise performance negatively were "Economical situation", "Employees availability and attitudes" as well as "Political decisions and passed laws". In Likert-scale set of questions, the most significant factors from the point of view of enterprise performance were "Product and / or service good quality", "Good reputation of the company" and "Staff's strong skills". The least significant factors were "Effect of marketing and promotion", "Conflicts" and "Differences of points of views of different generations". By Likert-scale set of questions, it was also tested which operations the enterprises perform, and according to the results, successful enterprises found "Performing a market research", "Use of distribution channel in sales" and "Expanding to new markets" less important than unsuccessful enterprises. The tests proved that the age of the enterprise correlates with the level of success of the enterprise: The younger the enterprise, the more successful it is. In addition, the results show that if the enterprise is family based, the less successful it is. In addition, there was also slight correlation between success and the level of growth, indicating that higher the level of growth the more successful the enterprise is. From the business environment point of view, the key finding was that internal factors affect more on the success of an enterprise than external factors, and that external factors affect more on the failure of an enterprise than internal factors.