The performance management process in health care is far behind compared to the manufacturing and service industries. Although nowadays the health care organizations are able to deal with a greater rank diseases, their cost, quality and delivery has essentially not improved significantly, and the difference with the other industries even seems to have increased. As opposed to this situation health care has a tremendous opportunity to deploy lean principles to reduce internal/external costs, improve patient safety, increase profits, reduce litigation and decrease the dependence on Government and Insurance. The application of these principles is being facilitated by the use of the new technologies. A new technology allowing personnel to constantly "see" what's happening with regards to patients schedule, backlog, workflow, inventory levels, resource utilization, quality, etc., is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). The aim of this paper is to analyse the benefits that can be derived from the joint use of lean principles and RFID technology in health care.
Most companies the world over are actively participating in the race of investments in the service industry. The main question to solve is what new products and services should offer these companies to remain profitable. Avaílable frameworks aiming at aiding the managerial decision-making process, -as it regards to new products and services design and development, are largely based upon empirical data proceeding from the manufacturing sector. Given that services are different from goods, the expansion of insurance services may require sorne peculiar approaches. Morgan et al. say that the turbulent environment of the eighties, "created the pre-conditíons necessary lor the consumer direct insurance industry to become a laboratory 01 experimentation jor the financial servíces industry". So far, as Stone et al. (1997,354) suggest: "lnsurance companies are now having to manage customer bases where average persistence is substantially lower that it used to be. This means a much stronger jocus on customer retention, customer acquisition, and customer development". This article examines how far the manufacturing oriented frameworks elaborated for the design and development of new products apply to the service sector in general, and to the European insurance industry in particular. European insurance companies operate in a highly volatíle market, so their survival relies upon the identification of the outstanding cornerstones leading to market leadership. For that purpose, insurance firms must design and re-design the essential core elements that will allow them to identify new areas of business and attracting and retaining customer. Drew states that the success and/or faílure of the new product/service development process for service firms are influenced by factors similar to those encountered in industrial firms. Nevertheless, insurance products and services use to have short product life cycles and it is easy to copy them; thus, sorne differences may arise between industrial products and insurance services. It should be also taken into account that the managerial practices of the European Insurance companies may diverge as the companies belong to different countries, deal with different types of insurance premiurns, and achieve diverse performance success levels. So far, it is important to develop an explanatory model that allow both researchers and practitioners to recognise the isolated and conjoint effects of the different variables that affect the success of the New Service Development Process. In this article, we examine how most successful insurance companies, -as it pertains to the quality, frequency, and quantity of successful new services,apply their managerial practices. More particularly, we review the underpinning points between innovation degree, marketing information sharing -as related to managerial practices, new product success and corporate performance. The model is tested applying structural equation modeling techniques to a sample of 113 European Union Insurance firms. We identify the different explanatory relationships, as well as the relative importance of the different analysed variables.
Reverse logistics (RL) has strategic importance. However, little is known concerning what motivates firms to adopt RL systems. Drawing on stakeholder theory formulations, organizational slack, and the manager's strategic stance concept, this article develops a model that proposes external, internal, and individual factors that affect the implementation of RL programs. Our framework considers three major explicative variables: the attributes of the stakeholder (power, legitimacy and urgency), organizational slack for RL programs, and the manager's strategic posture. The study draws on a sample of 118 Spanish companies and uses a probit model to determine the influence of these factors on the probability of firms to implement RL systems. The study finds that customers, employees, and the government salience in terms of RL activities and manager's progressive posture have a significant influence on the final decision of implanting RL programs. Conversely, the study finds that shareholder salience negatively impacts the decision. ; Fundación BBVA and the project "Estrategias en las empresas europeas internacionales y medioambiente: análisis de recursos humanos, producción y negocio" for supporting this research. They also acknowledge the help of Prof. Dr. Carlos Larrinaga in providing access to financial statements. They are indebted as well to the Spanish Minister of Education and Science and the Comunidad Autónoma de Madrid which have provided financial support under the research projects entitled "Diseño e implantación de las estrategias medioambientales de aprovisionamiento, fabricación y comercialización: relación con el rendimiento organizativo" (sec2001-1578-c02- 01), "La dirección de operaciones y las teorías de stakeholders y de recursos y capacidades. Implicaciones estratégicas en la gestión del ciclo de vida de los equipos informáticos" (SEJ04- 07877-C02-02),. "Efectos de los distintos tipos de relaciones entre las empresas y sus mercados: prácticas de marketing, orientación al mercado y resultados económicos", and " Innovación versus imitacón: un test de la capacidad innovadora de las empresas de la Comunidad de Madrid ". ; Publicado
