The delay in diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer remains a serious problem. Several psychological and behavioural patient attributes strongly determine both patient-related delay time and system-related delay time, but their strength is different in particular countries.
Background: One of the most important factors in breast cancer (BC) mortality is treatment delay. The primary goal of this survey was to identify factors affecting the total delay time (TDT) in Turkish BC patients. Methods: A total of 1031 patients with BC were surveyed using a uniform questionnaire. The time between discovering the first symptom and signing up for the first medical visit (patient delay time; PDT) and the time between the first medical visit and the start of therapy (system delay time; SDT) were modelled separately with multilevel regression. Results: The mean PDT, SDT and TDT were 4.8, 10.5 and 13.8 weeks, respectively. In all, 42% of the patients had a TDT >12 weeks. Longer PDT was significantly correlated with disregarding symptoms and having age of between 30 and 39 years. Shorter PDT was characteristic of patients who: had stronger self-examination habits, received more support from family and friends and had at least secondary education. Predictors of longer SDT included disregard of symptoms, distrust in success of therapy and medical system and having PDT in excess of 4 weeks. Shorter SDT was linked to the age of >60 years. Patients who were diagnosed during a periodic check-up or opportunistic mammography displayed shorter SDT compared with those who had symptomatic BC and their first medical examination was by a surgeon. Conclusion: TDT in Turkey is long and remains a major problem. Delays can be reduced by increasing BC awareness, implementing organized population-based screening programmes and founding cancer centres.
This study investigates the links between organizational culture, the use of open innovation sources and the performance of SMEs. The main hypothesis of the study is that a special type of organizational culture (termed innovative culture), which fosters creativity, learning and inter-employee cooperation – will correspond with a greater scope of open innovation sources and higher levels of innovative, operational and financial performance. The study was based on a representative CATI survey of 473 SMEs operating in manufacturing and services industries in Poland. Our statistical analysis relied on building and testing structural equation model with the AMOS software. The findings confirmed a positive association between innovative culture and the scope of open sources of innovation. However, innovative culture had no direct effect on the percentage of sales from new and modified products, which is often used as a metric of innovativeness, but did show a positive influence on an index of operational performance and ROI. Such statistical patterns suggest that fostering innovative culture is beneficial to a company, though probably not through an increased number of product innovations, but rather via process, administrative and marketing innovations, as well as other gains in efficiency attained due to more streamlined employee cooperation and knowledge exchange. The study adds to the existing body of knowledge in management science by providing a better understanding of mechanisms underlying innovative culture’s impacts on open innovation practices and metrics of operational and financial performance in the context of small and medium enterprises.
The primary objective of the study was to quantitatively test the DART model, which despite being one of the most popular representations of co-creation concept was so far studied almost solely with qualitative methods. To this end, the researchers developed a multiple measurement scale and employed it in interviewing managers. The statistical evidence for adequacy of the model was obtained through CFA with AMOS software. The findings suggest that the DART model may not be an accurate representation of co-creation practices in companies. From the data analysis it was evident that the building blocks of DART had too much of conceptual overlap to be an effective framework for quantitative analysis. It was also implied that the phenomenon of co-creation is so rich and multifaceted that it may be more adequately captured by a measurement model where co-creation is conceived as a third-level factor with two layers of intermediate latent variables.
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