A cartel is a group of oligopolistic firms that agree to act collectively as a monopolist in some industry or economic enterprise. Discusses the social contract of the Southwest Conference (a legal cartel) using some of the principles of constitutional economics. Viewed from a contractarian...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to introduce and discuss the concepts of service convergence and service integration, illustrate them in the context of the medical tourism industry, and link them to factors that contributed to the success of a medical tourism firm....

The complexity of modern policing requires an accountable police service to operate in a diverse society, where support/trust must be earned by action and deed. The article examines the potential of market orientated strategies in facilitating policing initiatives, such as community policing and...

With public services operating as monopolies, dissatisfied users cannot exit from the relation without changing patronage. Apart from exit from the region, voicing their dissatisfaction in order to influence the service offer becomes the only alternative. Industries and companies may be...

To meet the management challenges of the 1990s, governments must fundamentally reexamine their approaches to administrative policy. In most governments, administrative policies, such as contracting, procurement, information technology, land and internal government services, are often dominated...

Explores recent changes where, like other public sector organizations, the probation service did not escape the managerial revolution. The service has become increasingly focused in its objectives on policies determined by the Home Office, policies which have tended to measure numerical data...

In the UK the Benefits Agency is seeking to process its business more efficiently, and commissioned research to investigate the number and nature of the contacts customers have with the Agency. The paper draws on this research and outlines the case for adopting a longitudinal perspective to...

This paper reports a study that was carried out to obtain comprehensive performance ratings to gauge the productive and service quality performance of a public transit company using a recent performance measurement method called operational competitiveness rating (OCRA) analysis. The computed...

Geographically‐dispersed, global service organisations must find cost‐effective ways of delivering consistent service quality while recognising local differences in service culture. For such organisations, the management of operations cannot be separated from issues of training, corporate...

Purpose – This study aims to demonstrate a service quality improvement project implemented by the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology to achieve dramatic improvements with respect to service quality and speed in the refund process of the logistics center in Amway Company, Taiwan. It describes in...