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Background Taiwan’s colleges and universities are struggling to maintain their student enrollment rates owing to the declining fertility rate. Focusing on students in higher education programs, this study aims to analyze online behavioral patterns for university departmental websites and accordingly, suggests response strategies to increase the rate of enrollment. Methods We use Google Analytics to examine the websites of two departments in a medical university between February 1 and July 30, 2018. We study website patterns during the study periods for three college admission routes: STARS program, personal applications, and admission through examination and placement. Results Most website visitors during the three visiting date ranges for the two departments are 18–24 years. The visitor groups are mainly freshmen at the university and their parents. The homepage and Subject Credits, Course Planning, Teacher Lineup, and Certificate of Subjects were the most visited webpages. The overall number of daily page views varied by academic event. Conclusions University departments should enhance the presentation of featured courses on their webpage or distinguish course characteristics from those of competing departments in the curriculum to ensure clear market segmentation. In addition, departments should consider examining online data to identify suitable high schools that can be visited to attract potential students and to improve students’ willingness to choose their university.

BackgroundIn recent years, issues regarding the quality of healthcare have increased considerably in many low- and middle-income countries, including Taiwan. Evidence has shown that all processes and activities necessary for delivering healthcare service need to be controlled using a quality management system. Hospital managers should consider a variety of management strategies, and design a management method that ensures their staff provide better healthcare services to their patients. This study aims to explore the relationships between hospital quality culture, reward system, and employee perception of service quality.MethodsThis study employed a cross-sectional design and a questionnaire survey to collect research data. The research samples included employees in three medical centers in Taiwan. Three hundred copies of the questionnaire were distributed and 215 copies were returned.ResultsA hospital’s quality culture has a positive impact on its reward system. Quality culture has a positive impact on the employees’ perception of service quality, as does a reward system. The reward system is a mediator of the hospital’s quality culture and perception of service quality.ConclusionHospital managers could establish strong quality cultures and stimulate employees to provide better service to patients through a reward system.Trial registration:The clinical trial code is CS13119.

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between the strategy of market orientation and organizational innovation., – This research adopted a cross‐sectional study using questionnaires to gather research data. Research subjects were presidents and high‐level managers at 491 hospitals, at the level of district hospital or above, in Taiwan. Questionnaires were distributed and 104 valid questionnaires were retrieved, resulting in a response rate of 21.18 per cent., – The results demonstrated that the strategy of market orientation is positively correlated with organizational innovation; the strategies of customer orientation, competitor orientation, and inter‐functional coordination have a positive correlation with technical innovation., – The results of this study provide hospital administrators with a practical method for developing a useful management strategy in order to improve service quality for customers., – The majority of studies on market orientation and innovation have focused primarily on business organizations, particularly western businesses, and not on non‐profit organizations and Chinese businesses. However, the goal of non‐profit organizations when restructuring or improving their management processes is not the pursuit of profit; rather, they engage in these innovative activities in order to boost organizational performance. This study selected Taiwanese hospitals as the research target for the study of non‐profit organizations, and offers an in‐depth discussion.

Aim. This study aims to explore the relationships between organisational citizenship behaviour, job satisfaction and turnover intention. Background. Because of the changing health policies landscape, Taiwan’s hospital administrators are facing major cost reduction challenges. Specifically, the high turnover rate of nurses represents a hindrance and a human resource cost. This study focuses on ways of reducing the employee turnover rate through enhanced organisational citizenship behaviour and job satisfaction. Design. A cross-sectional study. Methods. This study focuses on hospital nurses in Taiwan. Our research samples were obtained from one medical centre, three regional hospitals and seven district hospitals. Out of 300 questionnaires distributed among samples, 237 were completed and returned. Pearson’s correlation was used to test for relationships among the main variables. One-way analysis of variance and Scheffe’s post hoc analysis were employed to test the influence of demographic data on the main variables. Results. The results reveal that the nurses’ job satisfaction has a significantly positive correlation with organisational citizenship behaviour and a negative correlation with turnover intention. Conclusions. This study has proven that the turnover intention of clinical nurses is related to their organisational citizenship behaviour and job satisfaction. Hospital administrators can reduce the turnover intention by meeting nurses’ needs and by promoting their organisational citizenship behaviour. Relevance to clinical practice. Organisational citizenship behaviour involves behaviour that encourages staff to endeavour to voluntarily improve organisational performance without lobbying for compensation. Employees’ job satisfaction includes satisfaction with the working environment or welfare programme in the context of human resource initiatives. Similarly, human resource protocols may serve as the starting point for promoting staff organisational citizenship behaviour. Administrators in clinical healthcare are encouraged to meet their employees’ working needs through human resource practices.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between three internal marketing practices and service quality. This research adopts a cross-sectional design to examine the relationship between internal marketing and service quality with structural equation modelling. The result of the research clearly shows that there are significant positive relationships between internal marketing practices and service quality. In particular, the results of the present research demonstrate that training programmes have a strong association with service quality. However, the relationship from performance incentives to service quality was not found. Consequently, to deliver excellence service to patients, a hospital must provide training programmes and establish a clear vision about service excellence to nurses.

Customer consumption value ultimately derives from enterprise production the consumption benefits which originating from inter-organizational cooperation as well as the transferred and accumulated exchange value of the enterprise with external organizations. This study plans to clarify the effect of the derived exchange relationship on enterprise exchange value, and also to identify the network models of different derived effect relationships. An analysis of the Taiwanese public health system revealed both positive and negative exchange value effects that impacted relationships among actors in the overall health system. Four generic models were presented by analyzing the qualitative data from phenomenon of different types of inter-organizational exchange behaviors, and other more complex models deduced from four generic models were also proposed.

In this empirical study, we draw on concepts of internal marketing to provide nursing managers of hospitals with an effective education method for healthcare service innovation. A cross-sectional study was used. Subjects for this study were nurses at two district hospitals in Taiwan. Internal marketing practices significantly affect service innovation. In particular, service training, rewarding employee performance, and a clear organizational vision are positively correlated with service innovation. To increase a hospital's internal resource capacity, education and training are often used to positively influence the innovative ability of employees. Nursing managers of hospitals could apply education and training strategies derived from internal marketing practices to increase nurses' knowledge, improve their nursing care and innovation skills and improve the quality of service to patients.

Facing changes in the medical environment, community pharmacies are seeking new strategies and developing new services in order to survive. In this two-phase study, we explored certain aspects of service development in community pharmacies. The first phase involved collection of qualitative data through interviews. In the second phase, a quantitative study was designed on the basis of the results of interviews conducted in the first phase, and sampling was conducted using a questionnaire. The results of the qualitative study showed that development of community pharmacies could enhance public health services and the pharmacy profession and facilitate a redesign of the service environment. In the quantitative study, over 64% of the respondents agreed that development of community pharmacies would enhance the pharmacy professional environment and provide flexible and diversified services. Another 95% of the respondents were able to accept the concept of self-care management systems that are based on public health services provided by community pharmacies. Regarding the redesign of the service environment of community pharmacies, 42% of the respondents reported that this is ‘important’, and 53% indicated that this is ‘very important’. Key words: Community pharmacy, pharmacy, healthcare policy, healthcare service, service science.

The purpose of this article was to explore the structural relationships among internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality and to practically apply the findings.Internal marketing is a way to assist hospitals in improving the quality of the services that they provide while executing highly labour-intensive tasks. Through internal marketing, a hospital can enhance the organizational commitment of its employees to attain higher service quality.This research uses a cross-sectional study to survey nursing staff perceptions about internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality. The results of the survey are evaluated using equation models. The sample includes three regional hospitals in Taiwan. Three hundred and fifty questionnaires were distributed and 288 valid questionnaires were returned, yielding a response rate of 82.3%. The survey process lasted from 1 February to 9 March 2007. The data were analysed with SPSS 12.0, including descriptive statistics based on demographics. In addition, the influence of demographics on internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality is examined using one-way anova.The findings reveal that internal marketing plays a critical role in explaining employee perceptions of organizational commitment and service quality. Organizational commitment is the mediator between internal marketing and service quality.The results indicate that internal marketing has an impact on both organizational commitment and service quality. Internal marketing should be emphasized to influence frontline nursing staff, thereby helping to create better organizational commitment and service quality.

As a result of the changing medical environment in Taiwan, hospitals encounter increasing competitive pressure. In response to an increasingly competitive environment, hospitals are devoted to improving the quality of service received by the patients. This study explored how learning organisation influences staff members' service quality. A cross-sectional study was performed. The survey sample included three regional teaching hospitals in central Taiwan. A total of 280 questionnaires were distributed; 226 valid questionnaires were returned, resulting in a response rate of 80.71%. 1). The results show the impact of learning organisation on staff members' attitudes toward service quality. 2). When the organisations applied individual learning, it influenced the staff members' service quality with respect to tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. 3). When the organisations applied team learning, it influenced the staff members' service quality with respect to tangibles, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. 4). When organisations applied organisational-level learning, it influenced the staff members' service quality with respect to tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy.

Operations knowledge is an intangible capital in businesses and serves as one of the sources of core competence. The cultivation and attainment of knowledge are beneficial to innovation capability. This study focuses on Taiwan's bicycle industry and its collective technological innovation process to probe into interorganizational learning, learning platform, and learning knowledge. Findings show that (1) Learning platform include information technology, special projects, and public activities.(2)Learning knowledge includes product knowledge, manufacturing knowledge, and management knowledge.(3) While learning knowledge stresses product manufacturing and management knowledge, interorganizational learning members will emphasize “special projects” as a learning platform.(4) While learning knowledge stresses experience exchange in management knowledge, interorganizational learning members will emphasize information Technology as a learning platform.

Organizational culture is the belief and value that exist in organization for a long time. The staffs' belief and value for their work will influence their attitude and behavior. The administrators usually adjust their style of leadership in order to reach the mission and goal that organizations gave to. The key factor that forms the organizational culture is entrepreneur. They have to understand how the culture influences administrators' leading behavior, and then they can make sure to mold the appropriate culture that will be helpful to reach the goal. We tried to explore the relationship between organizational culture and administrators' leading behavior. We collected our data by structural questionnaire; we issued 400 and retrieved 241 effectives. The results show us that organizational cultures do influence the style of leadership. There is positive correlation between ideological culture and transformational leadership. There is positive correlation between hierarchical culture and charismatic leadership. There is positive correlation between coordinate culture and team leadership. There is positive correlation between rational culture and transactional leadership.

Because of the competition of medical industry and the change of national health insurance system, it drives administrators of hospitals to pay more and more attention to service orientation as people said “patient centered” in Taiwan. The concept of patient centered of service orientation emphasize that we should change the physician-centered to patient-centered in the content of medical care, and make more effort in patient satisfaction. How hospitals can mold staffs' patient-centered attitude to satisfy patient's demands for medical care? Internal marketing is one of ways to choose and train excellent professions. The administrators can use internal marketing to deliver the strategic vision and goal of the hospitals to their staffs, and they can deliver the service value to their patients via the interaction between patients and staffs. They also can use the concept of training and educating that is emphasized in internal marketing to improve staffs' ability. We try to probe into the influence of the conduct of internal marketing to service-oriented attitude of nursing staffs. We take nurses who work at wards in three hospitals in middle and southern Taiwan to be our samples, and investigate their attitude to internal marketing conduct and service oriented. The results show us that there is significantly positive correlation between “professional capability” of internal marketing and “attitude of service” of service orientation. There is significantly positive correlation between “professional capability” of internal marketing and “enjoy on job” of service orientation. There is significantly positive correlation between “professional capability” of internal marketing and “service process” of service orientation. There is also significantly positive correlation between “supporting policy” of internal marketing and “response to customer” of service orientation. There is also significantly positive correlation between “customer centered” of internal marketing and “enjoy on job” of service orientation. There is also significantly positive correlation between “customer centered” of internal marketing and “continuity of service” of service orientation. There is also significantly positive correlation between “reward” of internal marketing and “response to customer” of service orientation.

The main purpose of this research is to probe into if doctors' commitment to organizational culture will influence their service quality, and the satisfaction degree of patient's perceived service quality, and the cognitive gap of service between doctors and patients. Our samples are doctors and their IPD patients in a regional hospital in Taichung city in Taiwan. The result shows that there is significant difference between the doctor's organizational culture commitment and service quality. Namely commitment to the organizational culture the higher degree is, the higher its mark of service quality is, the more satisfied the patient is. In the patient expectation and experiences actually, the majority is to present the negative situation, it mostly state that is unsatisfied. And then come up to look by the comparative analysis of the service attention degree of the doctors and their patients, eight are negative in 11 items, and four of them are significant. It is worth the hospital administrators and doctors weighing and thinking deeply.

Firms hope to ensure the capability of employees that enhances the pleasure of the customers and necessarily achieve this goal by promoting internal marketing. Accordingly, internal marketing is important for the service industry. Firms can improve employee satisfaction via internal marketing. Internal marketing can promote employee organizational commitment, and can also make employees glad to offer improved service quality to external customers. This study uses a cross-sectional approach to survey the employees of three district hospitals in Taiwan and attempts to understand employee perceptions of internal marketing, organizational commitment and service quality. This study found that organizational commitment is the mediator between internal marketing and service quality. The variables of marital status and seniority affect employee perception of service quality. Meanwhile, the variable of department affects employee perception of organizational commitment. Finally, ages and titles affect employee perception of internal marketing and service quality.

The value chain activities within organizations are inevitably succeeded with the resource input from the upstream suppliers. As the same rule, the output of organization's value activities will be passing to its customers as input of them. In other words, the value creating activities involve the internal value chain of specific focal firm. Also the external value chain of upstream suppliers and downstream customers, which are connected by exchange behavior between businesses and construct an industry-wide value chain system namely value network. The value chain is composed of the main value activities of organizational management processes (including the department of supporting functions and value process). As for the connection for external resources combined with the internal management processes, it is required supporting value activities including technology, motivation, and improvement of human capability.

This paper explores cultural factors that influence the propensity to blow-the-whistle in China, Taiwan, and the U.S. Statistical analysis of self-developed questionnaires reveals that: a) Americans have a greater disposition to engage in whistle-blowing than Chinese and Taiwanese; b) the intention of Chinese and Taiwanese to whistle-blow is influenced to a greater degree by the dollar amounts involved and also by the impact of illegal, immoral or illegitimate practices on companies and societies than that of the Americans; c) Guanxi (personal relationships or networks) has a greater effect on the propensity to whistle-blow for Chinese and Taiwanese than for Americans. Auditors and managers need to be aware that employees in different cultures respond differently to factors that influence whistle-blowing. The results of this study will help auditors and managers better assess risk and the effectiveness of internal controls and ethical standards.