3,804 research outputs found
Country Report The Netherlands 2010 : IEA Bioenergy Task 42
Rapport van het International Energy Agency (IEA) over de productie van bio-energie, het gebruik van biomassa en de toepassing van bioraffinage in Nederland
Effects of Roads and Traffic on Wildlife Populations and Landscape Function Road Ecology is Moving toward Larger Scales
Road ecology has developed into a significant branch of ecology with steady growth in the number of refereed journal articles, books, conferences, symposia, and âbest practiceâ guidelines being produced each year. The main objective of this special issue of Ecology and Society is to highlight the need for studies that document the population, community, and ecosystem-level effects of roads and traffic by publishing studies that document these effects. It became apparent when compiling this special issue that there is a paucity of studies that explicitly examined higher order effects of roads and traffic. No papers on landscape function or ecosystem-level effects were submitted, despite being highlighted as a priority for publication. The 17 papers in this issue, from Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and USA, all deal to some extent with either population or community-level effects of roads and traffic. Nevertheless, many higher order effects remain unquantified, and must become the focus of future studies because the complexity and interactions among the effects of roads and traffic are large and potentially unexpected. An analysis of these complex interrelations requires systematic research, and it is necessary to further establish collaborative links between ecologists and transportation agencies. Many road agencies have âenvironmental sustainabilityâ as one of their goals and the only way to achieve such goals is for them to support and foster long-term and credible scientific research. The current situation, with numerous small-scale projects being undertaken independently of each other, cannot provide the information required to quantify and mitigate the negative effects of roads and traffic on higher levels. The future of road ecology research will be best enhanced when multiple road projects in different states or countries are combined and studied as part of integrated, well-replicated research projects
Service quality indicators for business support services
Quality is critical to corporate success as it plays a vital role in improving organisational productivity. It can be
defined as âthe totality of inherent characteristics of a product or service that bear on its ability to increase the
demand for that product or service at a fixed priceâ and can best be measured by capturing customer
perceptions of the performance of those characteristics.
Customising the SERVPERF methodology to measure service quality in a business-to-business context and
subsequently testing it on both customers and suppliers of cleaning, catering and security services, the
research led to a number of important and valuable insights concerning the service quality construct in a
business-to-business environment.
First, service quality in relation to cleaning, catering and security services consists of nine clear dimensions:
reliability, clout, reputation, awareness, competitiveness, collaboration, accessibility, competence and
assurance. The nine-dimensional construct identified shows high reliability and good validity in statistical
terms.
Furthermore, eight of the nine service quality dimensions are strongly or moderately yet significantly related to
customer perceived service quality and customer satisfaction - clout being the exception. The same eight
dimensions are significantly, but moderately related to purchase intention - suggesting that that there might be
other constructs important in making a purchase decision (e.g. the costs of service delivery).
Third, relating the nine service quality dimensions to the financial performance of supplier organisations, it was
identified that six of the nine dimensions have significant relationships with one or more of the ten financial
performance measures investigated - reliability, accessibility and competence being the exceptions.
Finally, it was identified that customer organisations have significantly lower perceptions of the service quality
they receive than do supplier organisations for competitiveness, collaboration, accessibility and competence.
Moreover, customer perceived performance is significantly lower than customer perceived importance for
eight of the nine service quality dimensions.
For customer organisations, the empirical findings can be used to develop a framework of Service Quality
Indicators, which can be used for monitoring and benchmarking service quality perception. For supplier
organisations, the findings can be used for resource-allocation decisions pertaining to improve service quality,
customer satisfaction and ultimately purchase intentions.
It should be noted that the research is exploratory in nature and has only begun to address the many issues
that are important in the management of business support services, but the questions addressed - what quality
dimensions are important for customer satisfaction and what quality dimensions are important for supplier
performance - are arguably among the most important in service quality management
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