Thesis (M.P.A.)--University of Hong Kong, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 147-151). Also available in print.

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1985. / Also available in print.

After making a study of the pre-railroad Utah mail service, I have found it appropriate to categorize certain broad elements. This thesis is divided into eight parts, each part following in chronological order except for the one dealing with the Pony Express and the telegraph. Which covers approximately the same period of time as the chapter entitled "Resumption of the Mail." Though there was a most definite overlapping of time for these two historical phases, it would seem that there was adequate justification for making two chapters.The initial chapter in this thesis pertains to the unofficial mail, beginning in 1847. There was certain communication through and within the area of Utah before this, however; but there was no significant purpose to me in making a study of it at this time. My main objective deals with Utah from the beginning of its permanent settlements.The study deals with the following categories: (1) the unofficial mail between 1847 and 1850; (2) the beginning of the official mail in 1850; (3) the mail service during the middle of the 1850's; (4) the transition period between the early mail years and a more reliable service; (5) the resumption of the mail after certain significant difficulties; (6) the Pony Express and telegraph service; (7) the improvement in the transcontinental mail service through Utah as the routes from East to West were consolidated; (8) and finally, the concluding years up to the driving of the last spike of the first transcontinental railroad on May 10, 1869.The chief sources of information were government documents, contemporary newspapers, and miscellaneous materials from the archives of the Historian's Office of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City, Utah. Much general and specific information was also obtained from reliable historians, past and present.There are maps, charts, tables, and portraits included in this thesis for added informaiton and interest.

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High-profile instances of workplace violence and increased pressure from competitors have threatened the viability of one of the nation's largest employers, the United States Postal Service (USPS). As a result, the USPS began a massive change effort in the early 1990's. One of the initiatives implemented to improve labor-management relations was a derivative of the self-managed work team known as the crew chief program. This study provides a mixed-methods and multi-level approach to understand the impact this unique program had on organizational attitudes. The first aim of this study was to investigate whether the crew chief program reduced employees' stress and strain and improved job and supervisory satisfaction and company and union commitment, while controlling for the nesting of employees within sites and employee demographic characteristics. The second aim was to replicate and extend the stressor-strain-outcome (SSO) model of stress and to determine whether employee perceptions of crew chief support moderated the relationships between stressors, strain, and outcomes. I evaluated Aim 1 using data from 177 mail processors from 27 units matched from baseline to one-year follow-up with hierarchical linear modeling. This was followed up with an implementation analysis of qualitative data to determine the extent to which the program was implemented compared to the original design. I evaluated Aim 2 using structural equation modeling from 538 mail processors who participated at follow-up. There was little quantitative support for Aim 1. However, the results of the implementation analysis suggested that the crew chief program was not functioning as conceived. Aim 2 received strong support, with almost all of the main effects of the SSO model replicated. However, there was no support for the moderator effects. Additionally, I found role ambiguity to have direct relationships with other organizational outcomes beyond the indirect effects via strain and that crew chief support was strongly related to stressors and outcomes. These findings reinforce the notion that employing both quantitative and qualitative methods can dramatically improve the quality of organizational research. Based on these findings, I describe several suggestions for improvements to this specific program and for improving future initiatives aimed at enhancing labor-management relations.

This dissertation contributes to the literature and current discussions on the European postal markets and the universal service obligations (USO). It consists of three independent chapters.<p><p>In chapter one, we investigate the consumers' preferences for various kinds of postal services. As such, we begin by reviewing the market and regulatory conditions for Europe and for our case study, Belgium. Then using data provided by the incumbent provider, the Belgian post (Bpost), we estimate demand price elasticities. The data comprises customer transactional information on letter mail, direct mail, parcels & express services, press delivery and value added services for the 2008-2009 period. These categories constitute not only the important lines of services that Bpost offers to its clients but also the main segments that constitute the whole Belgian postal market. As such, and using standard methods, we estimate for each service an equation that explains demand by prices, product varieties (i.e. mixes or combinations of volume, weight, priority and destination, inter alia), income, regulation proxies and other socioeconomic variables. The estimated price elasticities for regulated and partially regulated services are around -1.1, whereas for unregulated segments they fluctuate between -2.1 and -2.8. The lowest price elasticity is obtained for direct mail services (-1.0); the highest ones are associated with value added services (-2.1) and registered mail (-3.3). Price elasticities may be influenced by the cyclical effects during the period of analysis. Therefore, elasticities are higher when compared with the empirical evidence obtained for other countries and through the various methodologies applied over the last decades. The fact that technological substitutes, such as expenditures on telephony and internet access for daily and administrative mail services and, radio and television advertising for direct mail services, could not be accounted for (because there were no data available) may however be considered as a major limitation for the scope of our results. <p><p>In the second chapter, we explore theoretically the effects of the USO on unregulated markets. In particular, we are interested in investigating its welfare effects when the provision of services cannot be technologically separated. We present a model in which there is an incumbent who provides two services: a universal service and a non-USO service, the latter opened to competition. This is the case of letter mail and direct (or bulk) mail, services which have quite different purposes and regulatory frameworks (i.e. the former is fully regulated whereas the latter is liberalized under the current European Internal Market framework), but are jointly produce at some stages of the postal value chain. The USO is simplified to two dimensions, affordability and quality, implemented as a price cap and a minimum quality standard (MQS) for the provision of letter mail services. The latter involves the technological aspects that we are interested in. We find that the definition of the USO plays an important role in organizing markets that are open to competition. When it imposes few quality requirements (low MQS), the incumbent is not cost efficient enough to provide the high-quality variant of bulk mail, allowing its competitors to cream-skim the segment. However, because there are cost economies, the firm's participation in the segment yields a higher average quality of mail services at lower prices. When the USO is too comprehensive (high MQS), the incumbent exhibits large cost economies that ensure a dominant position in the provision of bulk mail services. Consumers are worse off as competition induces too much service differentiation in order to make profitable the provision. Relaxing the definition of the USO mitigates the competitive advantage of the USP and so, yields improvements in welfare. In the absence of access costs, firms will find profitable to participate in the bulk mail segment. However, foreclosure happens if the USO induces the incumbent to exhibit significant fixed costs. Therefore, the USP may end up as the sole supplier of bulk mail services if the definition of the USO imposes too many quality requirements (high MQS). In that case, the authority must balance the welfare gains of defining USO with the welfare losses of the consumers of the contested service. <p><p>Finally, in the third chapter we consider the ownership aspect of the provision of universal services as an incentive to introduce competition. One can further segment the provision between services for customers located in high-cost areas and services for customers located in low-cost areas. Additionally, under the current EU legislation, the supply is divided between upstream activities (e.g. collection and sorting) and downstream activities (i.e. delivery). The provision of upstream activities in high-cost areas remains in hands of the incumbent firm or the owner of the downstream (delivery) network. The upstream provision in low-cost areas is open to competition, but a retailer may be vertically integrated/separated or legally unbundled with the downstream firm. Legal unbundling means, in our model, that the downstream firm and one upstream firm located in the low-cost area belong legally to the same entity entitled to all profits, whom does not have full control rights over the firms' decisions. That is to say, upstream activities and the downstream services will be managed separately under the same ownership. In this framework we analyze the firm's boundaries in terms of competition development and welfare. We implement two criteria to answer questions like, does vertical separation promotes competition (entry of firms) while covers a larger demand than vertical integration? Does vertical integration demand less public funds to cover demand? Does legal unbundling is worse than ownership separation to promote competition? The first criterion is the probability of entry (of the potential upstream firm), which we determine for each modes of ownership. The second criterion is the cost of public funds. It is implemented by defining a loss function as the difference between the expected consumer surplus when the downstream firm chooses an access fee that maximizes its profits and the consumer surplus when access is priced at marginal cost. The use of both criteria let us conclude that efficient entry occurs when the downstream firm is vertically separated or legally unbundled of the retailer providing services in the low-cost area. However, it is under legal unbundling that the access charge takes its lowest value. The highest cost of public transfers is obtained when firms are vertically separated, but the lowest one is attained when firms are legally unbundled. Therefore legal unbundling constitutes the preferred organizational form to induce competition and to reduce the cost of public funds. / Doctorat en Sciences économiques et de gestion / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the Masters Degree In Management Sciences Business Administration, Department of Entrepreneurial Studies and Management, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2016. / The retail industry is arguably one the most prosperous sectors in the global economy. Retail’s importance lies in the fact that it serves as an intermediary between producers and consumers. Given its significance in the everyday lives of people in communities and its role in national economies, the industry operates under extensive competition driven by growth in Information Technology which has dramatically changed the consumption patterns and buying behavior of consumers today. The changes are greatly influenced by different economic factors that impose change in the industry and impact on the bottom line of businesses. Thus, retailers are constantly realigning their businesses in ways that ensure that old customers are kept and new ones are sourced. It is from the foregoing that this study sets out to investigate the influence of transformation on the financial performance of the operational level of retail businesses: A case study. Using a quantitative research method, the study focused on 101 middle level branch managers of The South African Post Office obtained through the simple random technique. The questionnaires were administered to the branch managers and the data obtained was analysed using SPSS software. Findings from the study revealed that the overall business transformation has a positive impact on the financial performance of businesses. The results further revealed that continuous communication with regards to transformation inspires confidence among employees, thereby leading to productivity and the achievement of organisational goals and objectives. Findings also suggest that productive employees contribute positively to the financial performance of the business. The study recommends that retail businesses should consider overall business transformation in terms of structural design change, Information Technology, products and services and employee motivation to keep business relevant in the ever-changing global economy. / M

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Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Management Sciences: Marketing, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / Achieving customer satisfaction has been the goal of every organisation. In recent times, the postal business world over has experienced a sharp decline in the volume of mail due to more efficient alternative channels of communication. The dwindling volumes of mail have necessitated that public postal operators diversify into financial services as one way of generating more revenue. The Malawi Posts Corporation (MPC) is faced with challenges ranging from cash scarcity, increasing competition from banks and other financial services players like mobile phone companies. At the same time, the customer in the modern age is well informed and demanding high quality service. As such, the MPC needs to ensure that customers remain satisfied with the quality standards being delivered in its network. The importance of achieving service quality and satisfaction are enormous. High quality service and customer satisfaction are tools for competitiveness, productivity and profitability. The aim of this study is to analyse service quality in the Malawian public postal service. A modified SERVPERF questionnaire was used to assess customers’ perception of service quality, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. The service quality dimensions of tangibles, reliability, empathy, assurance and responsiveness were used to evaluate customers’ perception of service quality. The 400 respondents were selected using convenience sampling and the eight Post Offices where this research was conducted were selected using purposive or judgemental sampling. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyse data. Spearman rho was used to ascertain the relationship between variables. Man-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to compare differences between two independent variables. The findings of this study show that customers’ perception of service quality was generally good across all the five service quality dimensions and that all the dimensions of service quality have a positive relationship with customer satisfaction. In addition, the relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty was found to be positive and significant. Recommendations are made in respect of improving the service quality dimensions because they have a direct impact on customer satisfaction which in turn affects customer loyalty.

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