Process Variation as a Determinant of Service Quality and Bank Performance: Evidence from the Retail Banking Study

Conventional wisdom in retail banking states that firm performance is dependent on higher average process performance. This paper refutes conventional wisdom and provides empirical evidence, which demonstrates that low process variation contributes significantly to firm performance. More specifically, this paper examines the effect of process variation, caused by process variability, on service quality and financial performance, as measured by customer satisfaction and price-to-earnings ratio. This paper estimates process variation and reveals large variation in rocesses, reflecting large variation in firm strategy and process design. The data is from the

Sulphur removal using regenerable sorbents of rare earth/transition metal oxides

Hot gas desulfurization of gases from primary gasifier can be accomplished using sorbents composed Zn, calcium and transition metal oxide sorbents. The problem with metal oxide sorbents alone is that they are easily reduced at high temperature above 873 K to metallic state under reducing atmosphere decreasing their desulfurization capacity. Sorbents studied for hot gas desulfurization were based on Ce/La/M (M = transition metal) oxides and Ce/La/RE (RE = a rare earth) oxide. Sorbents were prepared using sol-gel method and the rare earth oxides were doped with transition metals using incipient wetness impregnation. Sulfidation experiments were carried out at 873 K using a reacting gas composition of 23.4 mol% H2, 41.4% N2, 3.1% water, 32.0% CO2, and 0.1% H2S. Reduced Ce/La oxides adsorb H2S at temperatures of 873 K and above, and were regenerable in O2 mixtures. The addition of group VII-VIII transition metals to Ce/LaOx increases the sulfur removal capacity significantly. Among the transition metals (Mn, Fe, Cu) studied, Ce/LaOx mixtures impregnated with Mn had the highest capacity followed by Fe and Cu. The optimum ratio of M/(Ce+La) is around 0.1 and the sulfur capacity was higher in sorbents which are rich in La, and the optimum ratio of Ce/La for high sulfur capacity is around 0.9. Addition of oxides such as ZrO2 or a third rare earth oxide increases surface area, sintering resistance, oxygen mobility of CeOx/La2O3 at high temperatures, and sulfur capacity. These ternary REOs maintained their capacity in next successive four runs and these were easily regenerated in air

Evaluating the integration of supply chain information systems: A case study

Supply chain management (SCM) is the integrated management of business links, information flows and people. It is with this frame of reference that information systems integration from both intra- and inter-organisational levels becomes significant. Enterprise application integration (EAI) has emerged as software technologies to address the issue of integrating the portfolio of SCM components both within organisations and through cross-enterprises. EAI is based on a diversity of integration technologies (e.g. message brokers, ebXML) that differ in the type and level of integration they offer. However, none of these technologies claim to be a panacea to overcoming all integration problems but rather, need to be pieced together to support the linking of diverse applications that often exist within supply chains. In exploring the evaluation of supply chain integration, the authors propose a framework for evaluating the portfolio of integration technologies that are used to unify inter-organisational and intra-organisational information systems. The authors define and classify the permutations of information systems available according to their characteristics and integration requirements. These, classifications of system types are then adopted as part of the evaluation framework and empirically tested within a case study

The assessment of usability of electronic shopping: A heuristic evaluation

Today there are thousands of electronic shops accessible via the Web. Some provide user-friendly features whilst others seem not to consider usability factors at all. Yet, it is critical that the electronic shopping interface is user-friendly so as to help users to obtain their desired results. This study applied heuristic evaluation to examine the usability of current electronic shopping. In particular, it focused on four UK-based supermarkets offering electronic services: including ASDA, Iceland, Sainsbury, and Tesco. The evaluation consists of two stages: a free-flow inspection and a task-based inspection. The results indicate that the most significant and common usability problems have been found to lie within the areas of ‘User Control and Freedom’ and ‘Help and Documentation’. The findings of this study are applied to develop a set of usability guidelines to support the future design of effective interfaces for electronic shopping

Overcoming the barriers to implementing urban road user charging schemes

Urban road user charging offers the potential to achieve significant improvements in urban transport, but is notoriously difficult to implement. Cities need guidance on the range of factors to be considered in planning and implementing such schemes. This paper summarises the results of a 3 year programme which has collated evidence on the issues of most concern to cities. A state of the art report has provided evidence on 14 themes, ranging from objectives and design to implementation and evaluation. A set of 16 case studies has reviewed experience in design and implementation across Europe. The paper summarises their findings, provides references to more detailed information, presents the resulting policy recommendations to European, national and local government, and outlines the areas in which further research is needed

The multifaceted role of information and communication technology (ICT) in innovation: evidence from Chinese manufacturing firms

Using a sample of 1397 manufacturing firms in China, this study explores how information and communication technology (ICT) stimulates innovation performance through interaction with investment in internal and external knowledge. The results of this study reveal that the adoption of ICT not only contributes to innovation by directly enhancing its output, but also affects the creation of knowledge along two different paths in Chinese manufacturing firms. Specifically, ICT mediates research and development (R&D) to foster innovative sales and it is an effective moderator in leveraging externally acquired knowledge