LD2668 .T4 1947 S35 / Master of Science

The service sector over the last few decades has become a symbol of prosperity and growth in many economies around the world in terms of its contribution to GDP growth, employment and standard of living. Despite this, the perception among most economists that productivity of services lags behind manufacturing still persists. Several scholars have attributed this to the conceptual, empirical and practical problems of measuring productivity in services. In an attempt to address these problems, the systematic review of extant literature and existing scales and semi-structured interviews led to the development of a theoretically grounded model and multi-item scales for measuring service productivity and its related constructs. The data was collected from higher education academics using a questionnaire instrument and was analysed using exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling to empirically assess and validate the proposed service productivity model and to test the research hypotheses. The findings reveal that resource commitment positively and significantly influences employee readiness and customer readiness. In addition, resource commitment, employee readiness and customer readiness positively and significantly impact on service productivity. Finally, service productivity positively and significantly influences stakeholder satisfaction. Each of the relationships in the conceptual model was supported and resource commitment has the greatest impact on both employee and customer readiness. Overall, the results suggest that the antecedent determinants of service productivity are resource commitment, employee readiness and customer readiness and the consequential determinant of service productivity is stakeholder satisfaction. Theoretically, this thesis advances our understanding of productivity measurement in services and contributes to its multidisciplinary theory building by establishing the determinants of service productivity and proposing and validating a conceptual model for measuring service productivity. Methodologically, this thesis contributes to the existing scales in marketing by developing new scales for measuring the researcher`s proposed constructs. Managerially, the proposed model and conceptual framework highlight the factors that service managers can employ in measuring, managing and improving productivity in their organisations.

This study is directed toward an investigation of the longer term aggregate consequences that arise from producer behavior in a production environment characterized by risk and uncertainty. In particular, the papers included herein examine circumstances under which individual actions may result in adverse long term consequences in the aggregate market, even though they are based on rational decision-making from the producer's point of view. The research is conducted in two distinct components, resulting in the presentation of two separate manuscripts. In the first paper a single product market model is developed with producer actions characterized by risk averse behavior. Individuals are assumed to maximize the expected utility of profits according to a mean-variance specification. Using an analytical framework, it is determined that risk averse actions can increase aggregate risk levels once market adjustment is completed. Aggregate market risk is measured by the change in the expected value and variance of consumers' and producers' surplus. Market effects are found to depend on the relative elasticity of demand and the price expectation formulated by the producer. The second paper explores the issue of declining soil productivity from a social perspective. Using a simulation model developed for a generalized agricultural market, the potential long term impacts of erosion on crop prices and on resulting measures of social welfare are examined. It is found that in the aggregate producers with erosive land are generally better of without erosion control than with erosion control, at least for the first few generations. In the long run however, these producers are significantly worse off as the effects of erosion outweigh any technology improvements. / Graduation date: 1987

No description available.

The aim of the research was to develop and apply improved measures of capital productivity using published airline data, and to evaluate the role of capital investment and productivity in overall airline performance. As well as contributing to total factor productivity, capital productivity is a partial measure, and the investment upon which it is based should improve the productivity of other inputs to the production process, in particular labour and fuel. Productivity ratios require outputs and inputs to be combined and indexed. Index numbers have been developed using weights that are consistent with the underlying economic theory, and also meet various tests (such as reversal and products). Airline passenger, cargo and incidentals were combined using a number of such index number approaches. Capital inputs were estimated using annual lease equivalents which when discounted to the present over the expected future economic lives of the assets resulted gave either balance sheet values adjusted to a common year’s prices, or the total of the market values of individual assets (aircraft).

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.