Strategic Shift to a Diagnostic Model of Care in a Multi-Site Group Dental Practice.

BackgroundDocumenting standardized dental diagnostic terms represents an emerging change for how dentistry is practiced. We focused on a mid-sized dental group practice as it shifted to a policy of documenting patients' diagnoses using standardized terms in the electronic health record.MethodsKotter's change framework was translated into interview questions posed to the senior leadership in a mid-size dental group practice. In addition, quantitative content analyses were conducted on the written policies and forms before and after the implementation of standardized diagnosis documentation to assess the extent to which the forms and policies reflected the shift. Three reviewers analyzed the data individually and reached consensuses where needed.ResultsKotter's guiding change framework explained the steps taken to 97 percent utilization rate of the Electronic Health Record and Dental Diagnostic Code. Of the 96 documents included in the forms and policy analysis, 31 documents were officially updated but only two added a diagnostic element.ConclusionChange strategies established in the business literature hold utility for dental practices seeking diagnosis-centered care.Practical implicationsA practice that shifts to a diagnosis-driven care philosophy would be best served by ensuring that the change process follows a leadership framework that is calibrated to the organization's culture

Aggregation and the Role of Trusted Third Parties in SME E-Business Engagement: A Regional Policy Issue

YesIt is against the background of low engagement by SMEs in e-business that this paper seeks to highlight the potential importance of aggregation and of the role of trusted third parties in facilitating higher levels of involvement. The paper is based on an ongoing SME e-business research programme and reports on some recent research on SMEs that were using high complexity e-business applications and explores the extent to which the research findings could address the core concern of low engagement. This qualitative case study based research includes analysis of data collected from 13 community intermediaries, acting as trusted third parties. It concludes that the role of community intermediaries appears to be central to the adoption of critical e-aggregation applications provided by service providers. For policymakers, this important role of critical e-aggregation applications in facilitating e-business engagement by SMEs has emerged as part of this research but there is limited evidence of policy initiatives that reflect this

Explaining the decisions to carry out product and process innovations: the Spanish case.

We investigate the determinants of innovation activity making a distinction between product and process innovations. We analyse a pseudo production function of innovations where among the explanatory variables, special attention is paid to firm and market characteristics. The study is applied to a large sample of Spanish manufacturing firms during the period 1990–1993. There are important implications arising from the empirical results: 1) Product and process innovations are intimately related independently of the model used in the estimation. 2) The control by unobserved firm effects as the ability and experience of manager is so important as to affect the conclusions on the managerial decisions about which type of innovation develop. 3) Given the feedback effects amongst innovation decisions and other factors determining them, it is also very important to consider a version of the model that allows correlation among those unobserved effects and explanatory variables. 4) The probability to innovate is higher in capital intensive firms and in firms with export activities. 5) Market competition encourages the decision to innovate up to a threshold. vi) The past firm experience and the managerial quality play a significant role in the probability to innovate. vii) Product and process innovation decisions are complementary

Placing Notes in the Virtual “Western Wall”: Online Memorial Culture in Chinese Social Media

Each society has a unique way of understanding death and coping with mourning. The increasing online mourners in China gradually generated a collective reference to the Weibo account that belongs to the dead, the “Western Wall.” This project searches for answers to two questions: 1) What characterizes Chinese online memorial practice? And how do these practices compare with those in the Western countries? 2) What aspects of Chinese culture and social conditions can explain Chinese online memorial practices? By combining corpus analysis with thematic analysis on 1,606 comments left on the last tweet of two accounts of deceased Weibo users, this paper found that Chinese online mourners present uniqueness in their commenting behaviors. Not only do they tend to repetitively leave comments, but mourners also use language in a way that wishes for bilateral communication through a broad range of topics. This paper argues that online memorial practice in China represents a social culture where certain topics are considered sensitive and therefore not suitable for discussion in the public. Additionally, the parasocial relationship between the deceased and the bereaved indicates the emotional connection people require in their lives. By leaving comments to the deceased on Weibo, online mourners collectively create a virtual “Western Wall” where they actively communicate to the dead in a way as if they were alive in a digital heaven