The relationship between medical literacy and trust in healthcare in Romania

The paper discusses the issue of patients’ trust in Romanian healthcare system, from the point of view of the information they get from the internet. Using cross-tabulations, correlations, and factorial analysis, based on data from the European Values Survey, we track the influence that internet literacy may have on healthcare related behaviour, choice, and trust. Further research should include primary data collection, in order to ensure a better focus on the niche we are interested in, and investigate adjacent factors which may interfere with healthcarerelated information retrieval and formation of patients’ trust in the healthcare system.healthcare system, Romania, trust, patients, internet, healthcare literacy.

Organizational knowledge dynamics

The paper addresses the main issues concerning knowledge conceptualization and knowledge dynamics, in the context of Romanian organizations. The links between organizational knowledge, organizational learning and organizational culture are being investigated, with the aim of conceptual clarification and paradigm unification, in a domain of increasing research interest, where increasing complexity implies the risk of increasing confusion.knowledge dynamics, organizational learning, organizational intelligence, organizational culture.

Implementing innovation and knowledge management in the Romanian economy

The purpose of this paper is to present a critical evaluation of the implementation and development of innovation and knowledge management in the Romanian economy. As a former socialist country, Romania faced some specific difficulties in its transition from centrally controlled economy toward the free market economy, and from state ownership toward private ownership. A centrally controlled economy is very rigid, and it is based on inertial and linear thinking patterns. Switching toward a free market economy means also switching toward a dynamic and nonlinear thinking patterns, a more adequate perspective for the complex and turbulent changing business environment. Our research identified and evaluated the main barriers in implementing innovation and knowledge management in the Romanian economy, and based on these findings we developed a series of possible solutions.barriers, centrally controlled economy, cognitive approximation, innovation management, knowledge management, linear thinking, nonlinear thinking.

Evaluating linear-nonlinear thinking style for knowledge management education

The purpose of this paper is to present a new perspective of the linear-nonlinear thinking style and its critical role in knowledge management education. Previous works in this field identified linear thinking as being rational, logic and analytic, and nonlinear thinking as being based on intuition, insight and creativity. In this perspective, linear thinking is related mostly with cognitive intelligence, while nonlinear thinking is related mostly with emotional intelligence. These interpretations have a slight connection with the generic concepts of linearity and linear spaces developed in science. Our research changed the cognitiveemotional perspective into a new one based on the fundamental properties of linear spaces, as they are defined in Mathematics. Basically, a linear model is characterized from operational point of view by a linear equation. That means that outputs of this model should be proportional with inputs. For instance, the temperature level indicated by a familiar thermometer is proportional with the mercury dilation. If the operational model is based on a nonlinear equation, then the model is nonlinear. Thus, cognitive thinking can be linear or nonlinear, while emotional thinking is by its nature nonlinear. Based on this new theoretical construct we developed an investigation instrument to measure the linear-nonlinear thinking style, and applied it to our students in master programs of business administration where there is an important module of knowledge management and learning organizations. The initial sample consisted of 500 graduate students in attending courses in master programs at the Faculty of Business Administration, Academy of Economic Studies from Bucharest, the most important and best considered university for economics and business in Romania. The questionnaire contains 50 items, with answers evaluated on a Likert-type scale. Using the STATA program we performed various analyses, and interpreted the final results in connection with the educational curricula at the Bachelor and Master levels. Conclusions show a dominant role of the linear thinking style, which might constitute o severe limitation in knowledge management and business decision making process.Education, knowledge management, linear, mental models, nonlinear, thinking style.

Study regarding Customer Perception of Healthcare Service Quality in Romanian Clinics, Based on their Profile

The paper presents the differences in patient perception on healthcare services quality, on a sample of ten Romanian clinics. The global satisfaction evaluation was based on three analyzed variables, namely the perceived competence of physicians, the perceived competence of nurses, and the empathy of the hospital personnel. In a quality-oriented perspective and, at the same time, in a relationship-oriented perspective, these elements were regarded as essential for the way in which the patient, without being fully informed as far as the characteristics of the processes taking place in hospitals are regarded, evaluates, while being in a state of physical and psychical distress, the quality of the healthcare experience they live. Our purpose, while choosing these variables for analysis, was to approach this experience by keeping it as undivided as possible, because it is a latent concept, difficult to measure, and we have to account for the reductionism of the statistical model. The main data processing method is PROXSCAL (multidimensional scaling), in SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences), by which we created proximities from data expressing patient satisfaction, grouping, then, the clinics based on their similarities, as far as patient perceptions on the service quality are concerned. The conclusions of our study serve as an orientation tool on the healthcare services market, by quantifying each clinic’s proximity other, and by outlining the factors which make the patients perceive groups of clinics in similar ways. These factors explain the favourable, or unfavourable perceptions on a certain type of clinics and the general influences on the healthcare sector, in its entirety.quality management, healthcare services, patient perception, Romania

Standards and markets for university-originated organizational intelligence

The aim of this paper is to bring to discussion ways to diagnose university’s organizational intelligence and to put forward some ways of measuring it. The main steps pursued refer to defining and describing the organizational particularities of universities, which modulate in specific ways organizational intelligence strategies implementation, applying the organizational intelligence standards to universities, and examining the features of the intelligence markets. The manner in which the paradigm of the traditional university is being changed, and finally eliminated, by the social stimuli which claim for a different type of intelligence originating in universities and which are the beneficiaries of the new model of university, as an organization in-between – preserving its idiosyncratic position, but engaging in mutually profitable alliances, is an issue we address to.organizational intelligence; academic strategic management; intelligence markets

Pharmaceutical Marketing in the Sanitary-Veterinary Sector

The paper discusses the particular problems marketing practice encounters in the pharmaceutical sector, investigating some of their underlying causes. The span of the pharmaceutical sector is then restricted to veterinary pharmaceutical marketing, as a domain in which not the clients themselves are targeted, but their physicians and owners, which are to decide on their behalf. If pharmaceutical marketing, in general, is to be doomed as manipulation, which would be the implications of marketing pharmaceutical products to third parties, with no consent from the beneficiary? The marketing tools and marketing contexts will be analyzed, in an attempt to estimate the efficiency of various approaches.pharmaceutical market, strategic marketing, veterinary services.

RECENT TRENDS IN LIFESTYLE RESEARCH - A LITERATURE REVIEW PERSPECTIVE

The paper comprises a literature review on the occurrences of lifestyle in literature, on samples of academic publications. The importance of work-personal life balance increased in the last 20 years and this can be seen especially in the changing role of lifestyle. So we find it natural that lifestyle is a topic highly debated in literature. Still, given the all-roundness of the concept, some frequency disparities appear. The first results show that only few articles refer to lifestyle in Europe, analyzed from the point of view of social sciences. The remaining majority discusses lifestyle from life sciences perspectives, with a particular focus on health acceptations of the concept.family studies, lifestyle, marketing, sociology

What's a university worth? Changes in the lifestyle and status of post-2000 European Graduates.

The paper is structured in two main chapters, the first presenting a literature review on lifestyle, underlining the main themes approached in recent scientific papers, and conducting factorial analysis as to discriminate the most relevant research directions, and the second dedicated to studying, on the data provided by the European Social Survey, the lifestyle patterns of post-2000 European graduates. The methodological perspective included probit regression and log-linear models, as well as cluster analysis. The main results refer to testing the concept of lifestyle calibration, that we proposed in the paper, on the selected population of young European graduates. A total of four groups, two exhibiting a good lifestyle calibration, and the other two a poor lifesyle calibration, were obtained. Each family of two groups constitutes a lifestyle type, which is characterized in the paper according to values-behaviours coordination, time allocation and its relation to life satisfaction, defined as an estimator of lifestyle calibration. The conclusions include discussions on the inclusion and exclusion of the European graduates population from these groups, which resulted from our analysis.lifestyle ; university graduates ; European society ; values ; behaviours

Estimation of the Romanian hospitals efficiency in relation to hospital market competition

The study examines a sample of 20 teaching and research Romanian hospitals, located in Bucharest, during the period 2001 – 2005, in terms of their efficiency and influence on their neighbouring health care units, expressed as an idiosyncratic form of market competition. Perspectives in case price competition will become a differentiation factor among hospitals, as health care migrates from the public to the for-profit sector will be addressed to, as well as the analysis of a possible switch, in the teaching and research hospitals’ (TRH) policy, from focusing on technical efficiency to trying to compensate their low operating margins by offering more unverifiable quality, which will be appreciated by the patients suiting a different, now emerging, customer profile.efficiency estimates, hospital market, Lewin Group model.