Competing Service Providers Research Articles

Kualitas Standar Pelayanan Publik Di Ruang Cempaka (Nifas Ponek) RSUD dr. Doris Sylvanus Palangka Raya

This study aims to determine the Quality of Public Service Standards in Cempaka Room (Postpartum Ponek) RSUD dr. Doris Sylvanus. This research is a qualitative research with a naturalistic descriptive approach. Data collection is done by using interviews, observation, and documentation. Researchers Want to Describe How the Quality of Public Service Standards in Cempaka Room (Postpartum Ponek) RSUD dr. Doris Sylvanus, can work well with the community. The author uses 6 (Six) Public Service Standards, 1) Service Procedures, 2) Completion Time, 3) Service Costs, 4) Service Products, 5) Facilities and Infrastructure, 6) Competency of Service Providers.
 
 The results of research and interviews that have been conducted can be concluded that the Quality of Public Service Standards in Cempaka Room (Postpartum Ponek) RSUD dr. Doris Sylvanus still found several people who complained about the existing services, namely: (a) The completion time was not good enough in providing inpatient guarantee completion time, because the time of 3x24 hours was still felt to be too short for the recipient of services and the service flow was not yet one door so it needed long time in administrative management, (b) Facilities and service infrastructure contained in Cempaka Room (Postpartum Ponek) dr. Doris Sylvanus Palangka Raya which is still lack of medical aids so it is very difficult in providing health services.
 
 The author's suggestion to improve the quality and service in order to increase community satisfaction can be done by improving in terms of the existence of information boards on administrative service flow on the wall. The Hospital must procure new medical devices to support the quality of hospital health, increase maintenance of Hospital goods facilities and inadequate public facilities.

TORCH: a TOSCA-Based Orchestrator of Multi-Cloud Containerised Applications

The growth in the number and types of cloud-based services offered to IT customers is supported by the constant entry of new actors in the market and the consolidation of disruptive technologies such as AI, Big Data and Micro-services. From the customer’s perspective, in a market landscape where the cloud offer is highly diversified due to the presence of multiple competing service providers, picking the service that best accommodate their specific needs is a critical challenge. Once the choice is made, so called “cloud orchestration tools” (orchestrators) are required to take care of the customer application’s life-cycle. While big players offer their customers proprietary orchestrators, in the literature quite a number of open-source initiatives have launched multi-cloud orchestrators capable of transparently managing applications on top of the most representative cloud platforms. In this paper, we propose TORCH, a TOSCA-based framework for the deployment and orchestration of cloud applications, both classical and containerised, on multiple cloud providers. The framework assists the cloud customer in defining application requirements by using standard specification models. Unlike other multi-cloud orchestrators, adopts a strategy that separates the provisioning workflow from the actual invocation of proprietary cloud services API. The main benefit is the possibility to add support to any cloud platforms at a very low implementation cost. In the paper, we present a prototypal implementation of TORCH and showcase its interaction with two different container-based cluster platforms. Preliminary performance tests conducted on a small-scale test-bed confirm the potential of TORCH.

Food insecurity among immigrants and refugees of diverse origins living in metropolitan Atlanta: the roles of acculturation and social connectedness.

Little is known about the prevalence and correlates of food insecurity among immigrants and refugees. Acculturation and social connectedness may influence food insecurity (lack of access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life) by affecting a person's ability to access and use governmental and charitable food assistance programs, as well as other community-based or informal food-related resources. We explored associations of acculturation and social connectedness with food insecurity among diverse immigrants and refugees living in metropolitan Atlanta, a major destination for these populations in recent years. From 2017 to 2018, we surveyed 162 adults attending health fairs or programs hosted by two community-based organizations serving immigrants and refugees. Food insecurity within the past year was assessed using the American Academy of Pediatrics' two-item questionnaire. Acculturation indicators included heritage culture and American acculturation scores (Vancouver Acculturation Index), English fluency, heritage language fluency, and percentage of lifetime in the USA. Social connectedness was operationalized using measures of religious attendance and social isolation. We conducted a multivariable logistic regression controlling for age, sex, education, household income, employment status, and household size. In the sample, 51.9% identified as Vietnamese, 16.0% Hispanic, 15.4% Burmese, 14.8% Bhutanese or Nepali, and 1.8% other. The average age was 39.10 (standard deviation [SD] =13.83), 34.0% were male, 73.8% had below a Bachelor's degree, and 49.7% were unemployed. Average scores for American acculturation (mean [M] = 3.26, SD = 1.05, range 1-5) were lower than heritage acculturation (M = 4.34, SD = 0.68, range 1-5). Additionally, 43.4% were fluent in English. Average percentage of life in the USA was 40.59% (SD = 33.48). Regarding social connectedness, 55.9% regularly attended religious services. Average social isolation scores were 3.93 (SD = 1.34, range 3-9). Overall, past-year food insecurity was reported by 17.3% (34.6% in Hispanics, 24.0% in Burmese, 13.1% in Vietnamese, and 8.3% in Bhutanese or Nepali). In adjusted models, food insecurity was associated with English fluency (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.36, p = .03) and social isolation (aOR = 2.29, p < .001) but not other measures of acculturation or religious attendance. Limited English proficiency may make it more difficult to navigate or use governmental and charitable food assistance programs. Social isolation may hinder individuals from obtaining information about food assistance programs, receiving aid for services navigation, and sharing or borrowing food from family, friends, and neighbors. Interventions should seek to improve access to English language and literacy services, enhance the linguistic and cultural competency of service providers, and build social connectedness among immigrants and refugees.

Factors That Influence The Appointment Of Service Providers In Gauteng Department Of Roads And Transport

Many South African roads experience inadequate construction and maintenance. The road construction scantiness is evidenced by the Moloto Road, Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Limpopo. This was dubbed the “notorious road” for the high number of fatal accidents. An assessment of factors influencing the appointment of service providers might be a profound strategy to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in the construction and maintenance of South African roads. The factors under study included financial stability and resources indicators, quality, environmental and safety indicators, management ability, technical capacity and past experience and performance in appointing service providers.&#x0D; This study sought to determine the importance and influence of the factors affecting the successful appointment of service providers within the Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport.&#x0D; A quantitative descriptive approach, with the use of a structured questionnaire was utilised to collect data from a sample of 155 employees of Gauteng Department of Roads and Transport within the City of Tshwane. Descriptive and multivariate analyses including factor correlations and regression analyses were conducted.&#x0D; Some important factors identified when choosing service providers were financial stability and resources indicators, quality, environmental and safety indicators, management ability and experience and performance. Technical capacity was found to be less important. A significant positive relationship was found between factors for choosing service providers and the selection of competent service providers.&#x0D; The results of this study greatly corresponded with the literature review. The same factors were identified as influencing the successful appointment of service providers in this department.

An Essential Service Decision Model for ABA Providers During Crisis.

In the United States, applied behavior analysis (ABA) is broadly recognized as a medically necessary treatment for individuals diagnosed with autism and related disorders (Association of Professional Behavior Analysts, 2020, Guidelines for practicing applied behavior analysis during COVID-19 pandemic, Retrieved from https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.apbahome.net/resource/collection/1FDDBDD2-5CAF-4B2A-AB3F-DAE5E72111BF/APBA_Guidelines_-_Practicing_During_COVID-19_Pandemic_040920.pdf). We argue that this designation should not be called into question in light of a particular disaster and that it is critical to consider that an interruption of services can have long-lasting effects on the treatment of the individual (practitioners are ethically obligated to uphold the continuity of services while doing no harm). This dilemma might be ameliorated by a decision model that considers the prioritization of immediate needs, the vulnerability of clients, and the competency of service providers. Just as the medical field prioritizes immediate needs during crisis situations and defers routine appointments (e.g., physicals, checkups), the ABA field can make similar evidence-based decisions. The purpose of the current article is to provide a decision model for ABA practitioners who find themselves questioning the need for essential service delivery during the current COVID-19 pandemic. The impact of this model goes beyond the needs of this crisis and can be applied to any emergency situation where services are at risk of interruption.

Fluid approximation of broadcasting systems

Nature-inspired paradigms have been proposed to design and forecast behaviour of open distributed systems, such as sensor networks and the internet of things. In these paradigms system behaviour emerges from (complex) interactions among a large number of agents. Modelling these interactions in terms of classical point-to-point communication is often not practical. This is due to the large scale and the open nature of the systems, which means that partners for point-to-point communication may not be available at any given time. Nevertheless the need for efficient formal verification of qualitative and quantitative properties of these systems is of utmost importance, especially given their proposed pervasive and transparent nature.Carma is a recently proposed formal modelling language for open distributed systems, which is equipped with a broadcast communication in order to meet the communication challenges of such systems. The inclusion of quantitative information about the timing and probability of actions gives rise to models suitable for analysing questions such as the probability that information will achieve total coverage within a system, or the expected market share that might be gained by competing service providers relying on viral advertising. The ability to express models is not the only challenge, because the scale of the systems we are interested in often defies discrete state-based analysis techniques such as stochastic simulation. This is the problem that we address in this paper as we consider how to provide an efficient fluid approximation, supporting efficient and accurate quantitative analysis of large scale systems, for a language that incorporates broadcast communication.

Compliance and competition with heterogeneous service providers: the federal Lifeline program

This paper studies how compliance behavior varies across competing service providers in the Lifeline phone subsidy program and assesses whether enlarging the set of providers improves program outcomes. In markets where firms compete to provide government benefits or services directly to individuals, the most productive firms—in terms of service quality or operating costs—survive and serve the market. However, imperfect enforcement of program rules may weaken competitive pressures through non-compliance, allowing less productive firms to maintain market share. I exploit institutional features of the Lifeline program, state-level variation in regulatory environments and a one-time reform, to empirically document the importance of provider heterogeneity following a 2008 expansion of Lifeline. The presence of low-compliance providers in particular markets drives the largest state-level differences in wasteful or inefficient program spending. Qualitatively, these providers appear to select into state markets with looser enforcement of program rules. In counterfactual simulations, excluding low-compliance providers prevents 500,000 ineligible enrollments, while only reducing eligible enrollments by 100,000. Further restrictions come at a higher cost, reflecting the trade-off of compliance and competition.

PERILAKU APARATUR SIPIL NEGARA DALAM MEMBERIKAN PELAYANAN PRIMA (EXCELLENT SERVICE) PADA DINAS PENANAMAN MODAL DAN PELAYANAN TERPADU SATU PINTU KOTA KENDARI

This study aims to determine and describe the behaviour of the State Civil Apparatus in providing services and describing the Implementation of Excellent Services at the One-stop Investment and Integrated Services Office of Kendari City. The research method used is descriptive qualitative research, a description of the results of interview observations and documentation studies, so as to be able to describe various matters relating to the Behavior of State Civil Apparatuses in Providing Excellent Service. The results showed that the behaviour of the State Civil Apparatus in providing Prime services in terms of the dimensions of receiving, responding, respecting and being responsible for providing services to service users had gone quite well, but the implementation was not optimal because there were still found several employees who had not shown behaviour and good treatment to the community. Implementation of excellent service in terms of dimensions of service procedures, service costs, completion time, service products, facilities, infrastructure, competency of service providers as a whole is good

Choices for competing service providers with heterogeneous customers: Traditional versus opaque sales modes

Competing service providers have been conducting opaque sales widely by cooperating with an intermediary, such as Priceline.com and Hotwire.com, to increase capacity flexibility, realise price discrimination and create a new channel for customers. Whether competing service providers should collaborate with an intermediary when facing heterogeneous customers and how a contract design can be made between service providers and the intermediary are two challenging research problems. Recent advances in opaque sales have focused on homogeneous customers, whereas the revenue sharing mechanism for heterogeneous customers has remained unexplored. This study considers two competing service providers that collaborate with an intermediary in a heterogeneous market with leisure and business customers. Styled models are built to capture the traditional and opaque sales modes. The contracting strategies are derived by comparing the profit of the two modes. Considering the simultaneous arrivals of two kinds of customers, we find that the decisions of service providers relate to two factors: the market structure and the revenue sharing mechanisms. In a high-pricing strategy market, service providers may collaborate with an intermediary. Conversely, in a low-pricing strategy market, service providers may not collaborate with an intermediary. In both situations, service providers should strive for a balance between the profit derived from the intermediary and the potential profit loss from opaque sales.

Maximizing Infrastructure Providers’ Revenue Through Network Slicing in 5G

Adapting to recent trends in mobile communications towards 5G, infrastructure owners are gradually modifying their systems for supporting the network programmability paradigm and for participating in the slice market (i.e., dynamic leasing of virtual network slices to service providers). Two-fold are the advantages offered by this upgrade: i) enabling next generation services, and ii) allowing new profit opportunities. Many efforts exist already in the field of admission control, resource allocation and pricing for virtualized networks. Most of the 5G-related research efforts focus in technological enhancements for making existing solutions compliant to the strict requirements of next generation networks. On the other hand, the profit opportunities associated to the slice market also need to be reconsidered in order to assess the feasibility of this new business model. Nonetheless, when economic aspects are studied in the literature, technical constraints are generally oversimplified. For this reason, in this work, we propose an admission control mechanism for network slicing that respects 5G timeliness while maximizing network infrastructure providers' revenue, reducing expenditures and providing a fair slice provision to competing service providers. To this aim, we design an admission policy of reduced complexity based on bid selection, we study the optimal strategy in different circumstances (i.e., pool size of available resources, service providers' strategy and traffic load), analyze the performance metrics and compare the proposal against reference approaches. Finally, we explore the case where infrastructure providers lease network slices either on-demand or on a periodic time basis and provide a performance comparison between the two approaches. Our analysis shows that the proposed approach outperforms existing solutions, especially in the case of infrastructures with large pool of resources and under intense traffic conditions.

Offensive and Defensive Marketing in Spatial Competition

While it is well established that travel costs impact on customer preference toward local service providers, research about how this situation affects competitive marketing strategies remains sparse. This article investigates, in a local market with two competing service providers, whether service providers should undertake defensive marketing (DM), targeted at the nearest customers who typically prefer their offering for convenience and/or offensive marketing, directed to relatively remote customers who favor the rival as the closest alternative. We find that the service providers can exclusively undertake either DM or offensive marketing or combine the two in a full differentiated strategy at the equilibrium. We compare the outcomes of these three strategic options to identify the conditions under which they are worth implementing. Main findings suggest that service providers are better off undertaking offensive marketing alone when their rival’s retaliatory offensive capacity is weak and customers incur small travel costs. Otherwise, service providers may exclusively undertake DM or combine it with offensive marketing when travel costs become significant. Also, service providers should not invest in any marketing activity when they have no market power, like in the case of two adjacent outlets in a mall. Finally, the implications of these findings are discussed.

Pricing of Digital Video Supply Chain: Free versus Paid Service on the Direct Distribution Channel

Media publishers that have commonly relied on profits from advertisements and content sales to fund their operations are not only content providers (manufacturers) to media aggregator platforms (retailers) but are also competing service providers (rival retailers) in the digital video supply chain. Different from a traditional media supply chain, they can easily operate their own direct distribution channels in the Internet era. In the digital video supply chain, it is not clear whether commercialization of the direct distribution channel would be beneficial for the media publisher because it would decrease profits from advertisements. The choice about commercialization should be investigated thoroughly because it is closely related to the media publishers’ sustainability as a public medium in a digital environment. In this study, we analyze the impacts of commercializing the direct distribution channel based on a game-theoretic approach. Specifically, we compare the profits of a media publisher with and without the commercialization of the channel from analyses of sequentially defined games. Our results show that media publishers prefer to use a free service on their direct channel if the content they provide is not highly valued. They can also choose not to provide their content to the media aggregator with a paid service.

The queer youth cultural competency (QYCC) scale: Measuring competency in direct-care behavioral health workers

Sexual and gender minority (SGM) youths are disproportionately represented in behavioral health treatment settings, and face disparities in outcomes when compared to their non-SGM peers. These youths need workers who are culturally competent in addressing their specific needs. This article presents a scale to measure the SGM-related cultural competence of direct care workers. The scale, named the Queer Youth Cultural Competency (QYCC) scale, fills a gap in the measurement literature and enables social workers to more robustly address the cultural competency of service providers as it relates to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning youths receiving behavioral health treatment.

Duopoly Provision of Services Based on Wireless Sensor-supplied Data: a Differential Game Model

The provision of services based on wireless sensor data is analyzed dynamically. In the proposed scenario, two competing service providers deploy their own wireless sensor networks in order to collect the data and provide services to final users. The service providers compete in prices dynamically in order to maximize their profits, while the behavior of the users is modeled using a discrete choice model. The model is analyzed using game theory. The changes in the population of users are analyzed through an evolutionary game and the Logit dynamic, while the dynamic competition in prices is studied using a differential game. We conclude that the dynamic pricing competition is economically feasible for the service providers and, in addition, the dynamic solution converges to the static solution of the scenario.

Computation Offloading in Optical Access Cloudlet Networks: A Game-Theoretic Approach

Computation offloading to edge-computing technologies is highly desirable to enable the use of low-latency computation intensive mobile-applications. To meet the desired latency requirements, overloaded cloudlets can further offload the incoming job requests to their under-loaded neighbor cloudlets. A novel economic and non-cooperative continuous-kernel game theoretic model is proposed to analyze the computation offloading strategies between cloudlets of competing service providers, supported by optical access networks. This model achieves a fairness in resource utilization as well as provides incentives to the participants. We investigate the existence and uniqueness conditions of the pure strategy Nash equilibrium for the formulated game. By linearizing the non-linear best response functions, we derive an approximate Nash equilibrium for the formulated game. We explain the dependence of the Nash equilibrium on factors such as computational resources, total incoming job requests, cloudlet to cloudlet transmission latency and corresponding cost factors. Finally, we show improvements in overall latency performance while employing the proposed Nash equilibrium offload strategy.

Young Adults on the Autism Spectrum: The Struggle for Appropriate Services.

In the United States, young adults with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD) lose federally mandated supports upon leaving high school. To arrange adult services, families must prove their young adult's eligibility and find competent service providers. National-level statistics regarding receipt of appropriate adult services are discouraging, but little is known about families' lived experience with regard to services. Therefore, qualitative interviews focused on the search for and satisfaction with adult services were conducted with parents of young adults with ASD, then analyzed using the constant comparative method. Emergent themes included Bureaucracy and Fighting for Access, Staffing Issues, Program Suitability, and "Doing It Yourself." The need to improve service access and delivery is discussed, as are issues facing specific ASD subgroups.

A Note of Caution on Using Hotelling Models in Platform Markets

We study a Hotelling framework in which customers first pay a monopoly platform to enter the market before deciding between two competing services on opposite ends of a Hotelling line. This setup is common when modeling competition in Internet content provision. We find that standard taken-for-granted solution methods under full market coverage break down, and that in the unique full-coverage equilibrium, the competing service providers set substantially lower prices. Standard methods and prices are restored by giving service providers the first move.

Provisioning of ad-supported cloud services: The role of competition

Motivated by cloud services, we consider the interplay of network effects, congestion, and competition in ad-supported services. We study the strategic interactions between competing service providers and a user base, modeling congestion sensitivity and two forms of positive network effects: network effects that are either “firm-specific” or “industry-wide.” Our analysis reveals that users are generally no better off due to the competition in a marketplace of ad-supported services. Further, our analysis highlights an important contrast between firm-specific and industry-wide network effects: Firms can coexist in a marketplace with industry-wide network effects, but near-monopolies tend to emerge in marketplaces with firm-specific network effects.

College students utility towards airtel services in theni DT with special reference NS college

In the few decade mobiles was only used for the purpose of and outgoing calls. Now the user is changed because the technology is changing day to day. The value-added services like short message services. Multimedia services 2G and 3G and 4G services were provided by the Airtel service provider. To know the value added services and the customer preferences and satisfaction towards the Airtel services the study has undertaken. To study the origin and growth of Airtel services in Madurai city. To identify the factors influencing the students’ utility towards Airtel services in Madurai city. Free text messaging services, free voice mail services, teleconferencing 4G facilities are provided by Airtel to its students better than competing service providers. This has resulted in switching over of students to Airtel services from other service providers.

Economic Feasibility of Wireless Sensor Network-Based Service Provision in a Duopoly Setting with a Monopolist Operator.

We analyze the feasibility of providing Wireless Sensor Network-data-based services in an Internet of Things scenario from an economical point of view. The scenario has two competing service providers with their own private sensor networks, a network operator and final users. The scenario is analyzed as two games using game theory. In the first game, sensors decide to subscribe or not to the network operator to upload the collected sensing-data, based on a utility function related to the mean service time and the price charged by the operator. In the second game, users decide to subscribe or not to the sensor-data-based service of the service providers based on a Logit discrete choice model related to the quality of the data collected and the subscription price. The sinks and users subscription stages are analyzed using population games and discrete choice models, while network operator and service providers pricing stages are analyzed using optimization and Nash equilibrium concepts respectively. The model is shown feasible from an economic point of view for all the actors if there are enough interested final users and opens the possibility of developing more efficient models with different types of services.