This study aimed to examine the healthcare service environment, patients' experience, and responses toward healthcare services in private general practice (GP) clinics. Self-administered questionnaires were used for collecting data from 367 respondents with prior experience in visiting the general practice clinics in Malaysia. SmartPLS statistical tool was used to test the underlying hypotheses. The results revealed that ambiance, service delivery, interior decor, and cleanliness had a significant influence on patients' trust and satisfaction while the exterior design is neither associated with satisfaction nor trust. Patients' satisfaction and trust had a higher significant effect on their repatronage intention, willingness to pay for a premium healthcare service, and engagement in word-of-mouth for healthcare services. In practice, both the service delivery and ambiance features of the healthcare services environment might be optimized by GP clinics. This research provides significant insights from the patients' perspective toward the GP clinics' healthcare services environment.
Bureaucratic power-the power derived from the formal authority of the bureaucratic organization-has become a central organizing mechanism in modern societies. In this study, we develop theoretical arguments to identify institutional sources as well as limitations of bureaucratic power. We argue that the very institutional sources of bureaucratic power also cultivate the countervailing forces that set limit to the exercise of bureaucratic power in formal organizations. These arguments and considerations are illustrated in two case studies of the ''inspection and appraisal'' processes in the Chinese bureaucracy. Our study raises issues about organizational isomorphism and calls for a closer look at the behavioral patterns in organizational processes.
Situated in an agricultural township in northern China, this study examines the rise of produce markets in rural China in the face of a chronic shortage of financial capital. Drawing on theoretical ideas in economic sociology, we explicate the mechanisms of gift exchange and credit taking and the conditions under which these mechanisms are used to mobilize financial capital and to facilitate market transactions in the absence of financial capital. We illustrate these issues and ideas using our fieldwork research on different produce markets and entrepreneurial activities.
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