Suchergebnisse

Purpose
– Business to business (B2B) professional services depend on inter-firm cooperation for the co-creation of value. Such cooperation rarely happens overnight; it requires time for the relationship to develop. The purpose of this research is to investigate how different performance attributes of a professional service differ with the tenure of the relationship.


Design/methodology/approach
– This exploratory study utilizes seven years of longitudinal customer data provided by a B2B professional service firm. The firm's customers assess satisfaction, value, loyalty, performance quality and their image of the firm after each project.


Findings
– Data were classified into three tenure related groups – i.e. transactional, emergent and mature relationships. MANOVA and post hoc contrasts of the average attribute scores of the three groups were conducted. The data support the conclusion that high performance in professional services is evident in mature relationships.


Research limitations/implications
– Data come from company archives and reflect the firm's efforts for tactical management of client relationships, not independent informant reports from randomly selected accounts.


Practical implications
– Satisfaction surveys can be employed tactically by professional service providers to develop stronger relationships with their clients en route to co-creating extraordinary value from high levels of service quality and the client's high regard for the provider's professional qualities, such as expertise, customer focus and initiative.


Originality/value
– To the authors' knowledge, no one has shown empirically the dramatic performance advantage stemming from relationships. This is important because theory suggests that customer relationships hold strategic value. Because they are immobile and inimitable, they represent a potential sustainable competitive advantage. However, relationships take time to develop. This begs the question of whether they are worth the time and effort to develop. In the professional service context, where buyer and seller seemingly must collaborate to co-create value, mature relationships indeed yield higher performance, compared to transactional and emerging relationships.

AbstractPartnership has become a dominant concept in current thinking about the parent–professional relationship within a variety of interventions aimed at child welfare, including family support practice. However, despite the burgeoning policy and research attention, the meaning of partnership in practice remains unclear. Based on interviews with professionals in a family support intervention in Flanders (the Dutch‐speaking part of Belgium), this paper offers an insight into professionals' daily interactions with parents. The analysis reveals a tension between professionals' commitment towards parents on the one hand, and the way professionals take up this commitment in an expert role on the other. Consequences for professionals' relationships in child and family welfare interventions are discussed, as well as some implications for the realization of proper partnerships that acknowledge the power imbalances that exist in such partnerships.

Relationships are central to the profession of social work; relationships with allied disciplines, among professional social work organizations, and between classroom and field education. However, embedded within these relationships are historical tensions, and contemporary opportunities that can advance both the science of social work and the status of the profession. This article mainly highlights opportunities for advancing professional relationships between Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and National Association of Social Work (NASW) and provides exemplars for strengthening relationships between the classroom, field education, and practicing social work professionals. We argue that deepening the connections between CSWE and NASW as well as the Society for Social Work Research (SSWR) require parallel efforts to link research, evidence-based practices, and the training and education of future social workers.

Objective: The present study aims to propose a reflective rethink theories about nursing from the Theory of Professional Links. Method: This is a theoretical reflection that addresses the importance of theories, as a working tool, which formalize the actions of the nursing profession and as a social practice, which builds daily. Results: First, there is the context of the construction of nursing knowledge and subsequently the Theory of Professional Links as an important management tool working to develop and strengthen human relationships nursing teams, using a model flexible and adaptable to reality and creativity of nurses. Conclusion: It is believed that nursing can provide their professional identity and its body of knowledge, more broadly, including subsidies brought there by the Theory of Professional Links relational issues that mark with a lot of intensity to do nursing.

AbstractAn ongoing, innovative youth worker professional development is described in this article. This initiative began as youth worker professional development and then transcended to personal and organizational development. It grew from a moral response of Saint Paul Parks and Recreation staff and two faculty members of Youth Studies, University of Minnesota to offer higher‐quality services to youth for their healthy development. Its underlying philosophies and ethos included building and sustaining meaningful relationships, cocreating a space for learning and change, becoming a reflecting practitioner, and community organizing. This professional development responded to the participants' interests and needs or to local situations in that moment, that space, and the discussions, and took on different shapes at different times. There were many accomplishments of, challenges and barriers to, and lessons learned from this professional development.

The study aims to examine winning brands influence on fans' brand loyalty in Iranian professional football league. A ten-minute pen and paper questionnaire was distributed to fans of five superior teams of Iranian professional football league in 2009-2010 seasons. Team's association questionnaire developed by Gladden and Funk (2001) was used for data collection. Reliability of the questionnaire was estimated by Cronbach's alpha coefficient. A structural equation model (SEM) test with maximum likelihood estimation was performed to test the relationships among the research variables using 912 participants. The findings showed three dimensions of brand associations influenced on fan's brand loyalty of which the attitude was the most important. Benefits and attributes were placed in the second and third rank respectively. In addition, the obtained model of this research highlighted strong interactional effects between the three mentioned dimensions of brand associations.

Objective: To identify the satisfaction level of the elderly and the nursing professionals that work in St. Vincent de Paula Asylum in Maringá-PR with regard to the care given. Method: Descriptive, exploratory and qualitative analysis. It was undertaken with 23 elderly people and 8 nursing professionals, according the cognitive state and availability, respectively, using a semi-structured script, between April and June 2012 and the collected data were submitted to Bardin's content analysis. The research was approved by Ethics Committee of the State University of Maringá CAEE 0050.0.093.000-08. Results: Were indicators of elderly satisfaction: interpersonal relationships users/providers, representations about the health-disease process, infrastructure, service material and adaptive process of institutionalization. While affinity to the job/team, wages, difficulties in daily practice and the reason for the job seeking influenced the professionals' satisfaction. Conclusion: Both elderly as nursing professionals were contented with the care given for the elderly in the asylum.

Summary Current policy discourses demonstrate a weak connection to broader theoretical debates about family obligation and in particular how family responsibilities become negotiated over time and across the life course. How policy imagines family care can, therefore, be different to the actual experiences of families. This qualitative paper, using semi-structured interviews, explores the experience of a particularly neglected group, adult siblings, who have a brother or sister with autism (plus learning disability). We spoke to 21 adult siblings, met with 12 of their siblings with autism and talked to 12 health and social care professionals. Findings Our analysis suggests that connectedness and commitment, which remained subject to continuous redefinition by all family members, informed sibling relationships Practitioners, however, struggle to engage with this complexity, thereby undermining the extent siblings' relationships can be realised. Application The paper concludes that policy initiatives are at risk of becoming an uneasy compromise, in which the need to offer choice occurs alongside the 'problem' of managing family care. Sibling relationships are more than simply 'being of' or 'belonging to' a family. They are dynamic, subject to contingency and negotiation. Interventions should be formulated to work with these assumptions, without presupposing a definite experience fixed in time and space. This would not only maximise the disabled siblings' quality of life, but also ensure a more productive and fulfilling context for family relationships.

Drawing upon analysis of policy documents and interviews with key policy makers and professionals co-ordinating Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) in various settings, this paper interrogates the socio-political drivers underpinning SRE policy and practice with reference to the contemporary Welsh context. In media output in the UK context and beyond, there have been widespread public concerns about the over-sexualization of young girls, sexual grooming and the increasing commercialization of sex. These issues are also significant in Wales, but a different socio-political culture has led to different public pronouncements and a distinctive SRE approach. In this paper, we outline relatively new Welsh Assembly Government guidance on SRE (March 2010) in the context of a devolved education system. We argue that the characteristics of the Welsh approach to SRE include an emphasis on children's rights and citizenship values, together with efforts to make SRE delivery more multidisciplinary and integrated. We also identify a different political rhetoric around sexual morality and family values, compared with that of England. This more progressive approach to SRE policy making, implementation and delivery in Wales is contrasted with the more heated pronouncements on the subject emanating from Westminster, particularly in recent years.

The study aims to examine brand management model in Iran's professional Football League (2011-2012) with emphasis on brand image. The study was descriptive-survey one. A sample of Iranian professional football league fans (N=911) responded 4 items questionnaire. A structural equation model (SEM) test with maximum likelihood estimation was performed to test the relationships among the research variables. The analyses of data showed three dimensions of brand image influenced on fan's brand loyalty of which the attitude was the most important. Benefits and attributes were placed in the second and third rank respectively. According to Results, brand image play a pivotal role between Iranian fans brand loyalty. Create an attractive and desirable brand image in the fans mind increases brand loyalty. And due to, revenue and profits increase through ticket sales and products of club and also attract more sponsors.

The purpose of this descriptive study was to assess the perceived level of competence among 4-H Youth Development Agents from a Southern state in the United States. The findings will be used to identify gaps in and opportunities for professional training and development experiences in supporting the competence and growth of youth professionals. Based on the 4-H Professional Research, Knowledge, and Competency Model (Stone & Rennekamp, 2004), youth development professionals rated their youth development competence in nine youth development core competency areas. Utilizing a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1=no knowledge to 5=expert, youth development professionals rated their youth development competence ranging from 3.12 to 3.54. According to an interpretive scale, youth development professionals rated their competence as intermediate. Staff felt most competent in the areas of current youth issues, career opportunities for youth, and family structures/relationships. Staff felt least competent in the area of mental development of youth. No one identified themselves as an expert in the areas of psychological development, emotional development, and current youth issues.