Technology influences on small logistics providers:a case study analysis

ICT has triggered many changes in the logistics service industry. New technology is reshaping the organisation and structure of this industry as ICT impacts significantly on the operations of 3PLs. Within this process, while large 3PLs are gaining substantial benefits from technology usage, the nature of changes resulting from ICT usage in small 3PLs remains unclear. This is critical particularly for those markets populated by a high number of small 3PLs such as the Italian logistics industry. From the research point of view, there is still a gap in the literature where the role of technological capability in small 3PLs are seriously underestimated. This gives rise to the need to develop investigation in this area. This paper presents the preliminary results of a case study analysis on ICT usage in a sample of 7 small Italian 3PLs. The results highlight some of the barriers to effective ICT implementation, as well as some of the critical success factors.

Reformed county government structure and service delivery performance: An integrated study of Florida counties

The most fundamental and challenging function of government is the effective and efficient delivery of services to local taxpayers and businesses. Counties, once known as the “dark continent” of American government, have recently become a major player in the provision of services. Population growth and suburbanization have increased service demands while the counties' role as service provider to incorporated residents has also expanded due to additional federal and state mandates. County governments are under unprecedented pressure and scrutiny to meet citizens' and elected officials' demands for high quality, and equitable delivery of services at the lowest possible cost while contending with anti-tax sentiments, greatly decreased state and federal support, and exceptionally costly and complex health and public safety problems. ^ This study tested the reform government theory proposition that reformed structures of county government positively correlate with efficient service delivery. A county government reformed index was developed for this dissertation comprised of form of government, home-rule status, method of election, number of government jurisdictions, and number of elected officials. The county government reform index and a measure of relative structural fragmentation were used to assess their impact on two measures of service output: mean county road pavement condition and county road maintenance expenditures. The study's multi-level design triangulated results from different data sources and methods of analysis. Data were collected from semi-structured interviews of county officials, secondary archival sources, and a survey of 544 elected and appointed officials from Florida's 67 counties. The results of the three sources of data converged in finding that reformed Florida counties are more likely than unreformed counties to provide better road service and to spend less on road expenditures. The same results were found for unfragmented Florida counties. Because both the county government reform index and the fragmentation variables were specified acknowledging the reform theory as well as elements from the public-choice model, the results help explain contradicting findings in the urban service research. ^ Therefore, as suggested by the corroborated findings of this dissertation, reformed as well as unfragmented counties are better providers of road maintenance service and do so in a less costly manner. These findings hold although the variables were specified to capture theoretical arguments from the consolidated as well as the public-choice theories suggesting a way to advance the debate from the consolidated-fragmented dichotomy of urban governance. ^

Contracted School Food Service: Advantages, Disadvantages, and Political Concerns

Schools have evolved to be providers of education as well as suppliers of ancillary services to the population that they serve. This article examines one of these ancillary services, food service, in order to provide some awareness of the political aspects of the decision-making process in choosing whether or not to contract this service, as well as the pros and cons of the situation.

Market reforms and privatisation in the English National Health Service

The article examines developments in the marketisation and privatisation of the English National Health Service, primarily since 1997. It explores the use of competition and contracting out in ancillary services and the levering into public services of private finance for capital developments through the Private Finance Initiative. A substantial part of the article examines the repeated restructuring of the health service as a market in clinical services, initially as an internal market but subsequently as a market increasing opened up to private sector involvement. Some of the implications of market processes for NHS staff and for increased privatisation are discussed. The article examines one episode of popular resistance to these developments, namely the movement of opposition to the 2011 health and social care legislative proposals. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications of these system reforms for the founding principles of the NHS and the sustainability of the service.

Justified assessments of service provider reputation

Abstract Reputation, influenced by ratings from past clients, is crucial for providers competing for custom. For new providers with less track record, a few negative ratings can harm their chances of growing. In the JASPR project, we aim to look at how to ensure automated reputation assessments are justified and informative. Even an honest balanced review of a service provision may still be an unreliable predictor of future performance if the circumstances differ. For example, a service may have previously relied on different sub-providers to now, or been affected by season-specific weather events. A common way to ameliorate the ratings that may not reflect future performance is by weighting by recency. We argue that better results are obtained by querying provenance records on how services are provided for the circumstances of provision, to determine the significance of past interactions. Informed by case studies in global logistics, taxi hire, and courtesy car leasing, we are going on to explore the generation of explanations for reputation assessments, which can be valuable both for clients and for providers wishing to improve their match to the market, and applying machine learning to predict aspects of service provision which may influence decisions on the appropriateness of a provider. In this talk, I will give an overview of the research conducted and planned on JASPR. Speaker Biography Dr Simon Miles Simon Miles is a Reader in Computer Science at King's College London, UK, and head of the Agents and Intelligent Systems group. He conducts research in the areas of normative systems, data provenance, and medical informatics at King's, and has published widely and manages a number of research projects in these areas. He was previously a researcher at the University of Southampton after graduating from his PhD at Warwick. He has twice been an organising committee member for the Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems conference series, and was a member of the W3C working group which published standards on interoperable provenance data in 2013.

Assessing variation in personal health service delivery and workplace smoking ban enforcement by local health departments

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-08

An Innovation Model for Collaborative Networks of SOA-Based Software Providers

Part 5: Service Orientation in Collaborative Networks

Managerialist vis-à-vis learning and development goals for EAL teachers: A case study of an in-service professional development provider

Under current Western neoliberal philosophy, promotion of efficiency and resolution of issues are typically expected to result from effective management. The education sector, too, has responded well to these expectations. Amongst such expectations, engagement in professional development activities (PDAs) by teachers of English as an additional language (EAL) is widely encouraged, considered to be essential, and usually conducted with a view to facilitate effective and effortless administration. As such, institutional offerings of PDAs driven by managerialist agendas generally tend to be ad hoc attempts to facilitate administrative decisions rather than opportunities for teachers’ lifelong learning and development. Under such circumstances, providers of in-service PDAs are faced with a conflicting dilemma – that of facilitating an effortless flow of administration and, at the same time, promoting teacher learning and development. We foreground one case of such dilemma surrounding the offering of PDAs derived as interview data from an experienced provider of in-service PDAs for EAL teachers.

Service level agreements framework for digital libraries quality of service management

No framework that provides practical approach for the assessment of quality of service level offered by digital libraries exists.This thesis aims to address this gap. The thesis develops a service level agreement (SLA) based mechanisms for the digital libraries to measure and assess the quality of service they deliver to their customers. An SLA is a formal contract between the digital content providers and the digital library consumers.

Toward Self-Organising Service Communities

This paper discusses a framework in which catalog service communities are built, linked for interaction, and constantly monitored and adapted over time. A catalog service community (represented as a peer node in a peer-to-peer network) in our system can be viewed as domain specific data integration mediators representing the domain knowledge and the registry information. The query routing among communities is performed to identify a set of data sources that are relevant to answering a given query. The system monitors the interactions between the communities to discover patterns that may lead to restructuring of the network (e.g., irrelevant peers removed, new relationships created, etc.).