Innovative Public Service Delivery: How to assess the new relationship between public agencies and society?

One of the major challenges faced by the Public Administration is how to create more value for both citizens and firms, mainly because of the increasing budgetary constraints and challenging demands from society. In fact, over the past two decades there has been a general movement of public reform in most developed countries, and for this reason it is essential to understand how users assess public services’ quality. This paper aims at understanding the determinants of public services’ quality. Due to the nature of the research problem, we have adopted a case-study methodology. The research involved an extensive qualitative and quantitative data collection with managers, citizens and front and back-office public servants, by means of interviews, questionnaires and focus groups. The paper presents the case of Citizen Shops in Portugal, a recent and innovative channel of public services’ delivery, within a strong relationship perspective. Firstly, it explores the kind of relationships that are developed during the public service encounter between the citizen, the public organization and society. Secondly, both citizen’s satisfaction and dissatisfaction with public services are investigated. The basic premise is that these two concepts are not opposite but have different determinants instead. Furthermore, the paper also explores the existence of a zone of tolerance and emphasizes the importance of managing emotions in the public service encounter. Finally, it is discussed that public services’ quality assessment should also take into consideration the implications on the value to society.Public services; citizen shops; quality determinants; satisfaction; dissatisfaction

New Forms of Public Service Delivery – are they really valuable?

One of the major challenges currently faced by Public Administrations is the creation of more value for both citizens and firms, mainly because of the increasing budgetary constraints and challenging demands from society. In fact, in the last two decades there has been a general movement of public reform in almost all developed countries, and for this reason it became essential to understand how users assess public services’ quality. This paper aims precisely at understanding which the determinants of public services’ quality are. Due to the nature of the research problem, the case-study methodology has been chosen. Thus, this paper presents the case-study of Citizen Shops in Portugal, a recent and innovative channel of public services’ delivery, within a strong relational perspective. This research involved an extensive qualitative and quantitative data collection. The main findings and implications are presented and discussed.public services; Citizen Shops; quality determinants; satisfaction; dissatisfaction

Value Co-Creation with Suppliers

The growing specialization of firms and the reinforcement of vertical disintegration have led to an increasing reliance on purchasing and supply management. This means that an increasing proportion of value is created outside the boundaries of the firm, namely by suppliers. In this context, the paper aims to relate the configuration of the bonds companies establish with their suppliers to the process of value creation. The paper furthers our understanding of buyer-supplier relationships as mechanisms for the coordination and development of capabilities on both sides of the dyad. Evidence was found that relationships affect not only the access and exploration of suppliers’ resources, but also the perception the buying firm has about their capabilities which is likely to condition the potential for joint value creation. The main contribution of the paper is that value co-creation involving suppliers must be regarded as a strategic option which depends on several conditions. This research puts in evidence two of these conditions: suppliers’ capabilities and the way the buyer-seller relationships are configured.Buyer-supplier relationships, capabilities, relationship configuration, value creation

Nonlinear Hebbian learning as a unifying principle in receptive field formation

The development of sensory receptive fields has been modeled in the past by a variety of models including normative models such as sparse coding or independent component analysis and bottom-up models such as spike-timing dependent plasticity or the Bienenstock-Cooper-Munro model of synaptic plasticity. Here we show that the above variety of approaches can all be unified into a single common principle, namely Nonlinear Hebbian Learning. When Nonlinear Hebbian Learning is applied to natural images, receptive field shapes were strongly constrained by the input statistics and preprocessing, but exhibited only modest variation across different choices of nonlinearities in neuron models or synaptic plasticity rules. Neither overcompleteness nor sparse network activity are necessary for the development of localized receptive fields. The analysis of alternative sensory modalities such as auditory models or V2 development lead to the same conclusions. In all examples, receptive fields can be predicted a priori by reformulating an abstract model as nonlinear Hebbian learning. Thus nonlinear Hebbian learning and natural statistics can account for many aspects of receptive field formation across models and sensory modalities

A novel variational model for image registration using Gaussian curvature

Image registration is one important task in many image processing applications. It aims to align two or more images so that useful information can be extracted through comparison, combination or superposition. This is achieved by constructing an optimal trans- formation which ensures that the template image becomes similar to a given reference image. Although many models exist, designing a model capable of modelling large and smooth deformation field continues to pose a challenge. This paper proposes a novel variational model for image registration using the Gaussian curvature as a regulariser. The model is motivated by the surface restoration work in geometric processing [Elsey and Esedoglu, Multiscale Model. Simul., (2009), pp. 1549-1573]. An effective numerical solver is provided for the model using an augmented Lagrangian method. Numerical experiments can show that the new model outperforms three competing models based on, respectively, a linear curvature [Fischer and Modersitzki, J. Math. Imaging Vis., (2003), pp. 81- 85], the mean curvature [Chumchob, Chen and Brito, Multiscale Model. Simul., (2011), pp. 89-128] and the diffeomorphic demon model [Vercauteren at al., NeuroImage, (2009), pp. 61-72] in terms of robustness and accuracy.Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures. Key words: Image registration, Non-parametric image registration, Regularisation, Gaussian curvature, surface mappin

Uma Abordagem Relacional ao Valor da Marca

As marcas não são meros sinais. As marcas não se resumem também a simples elementos que ajudam a posicionar produtos e empresas. Durante muitos anos, as marcas foram encaradas como elos de ligação entre os produtos/empresas e os seus clientes. Contudo, esta perspectiva mudou significativamente na medida em que as marcas são hoje encaradas como parceiras nos relacionamentos que se estabelecem com os consumidores. Neste contexto, este trabalho desenvolve um modelo integrado que tem por base uma perspectiva relacional do valor da marca