Derk Jan Kiewiet

Disseminating educational innovations in health care practice: Training versus social networks

Improvements and innovation in health service organization and delivery have become more and more important due to the gap between knowledge and practice, rising costs, medical errors, and the organization of health care systems. Since training and education is widely used to convey and distribute innovative initiatives, we examined the effect that following an intensive Teach-the-Teacher training had on the dissemination of a new structured competency-based feedback technique of assessing clinical competencies among medical specialists in the Netherlands. We compared this with the effect of the structure of the social network of medical specialists, specifically the network tie strength (strong ties versus weak ties). We measured dissemination of the feedback technique by using a questionnaire filled in by Obstetrics & Gynecology and Pediatrics residents (n=63). Data on network tie strength was gathered with a structured questionnaire given to medical specialists (n=81). Social network analysis was used to compose the required network coefficients. We found a strong effect for network tie strength and no effect for the Teach-the-Teacher training course on the dissemination of the new structured feedback technique. This paper shows the potential that social networks have for disseminating innovations in health service delivery and organization. Further research is needed into the role and structure of social networks on the diffusion of innovations between departments and the various types of innovations involved.

Improving Performance of Product Development Teams Through Managing Polarity

Abstract The new economy urges product development cycles to become shorter. At the same time, the accompanying new communication technology offers the opportunity to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of product development because it is no longer necessary for the members of product development teams to be in the same geographic location. As a result, product development teams become virtual. The concept of polarity is introduced as a measure of conflict and as an instrument to manage these virtual teams more effectively and to enhance the performance of teams. The relationship between polarity and performance is modeled on data provided by 35 product development teams. Polarity is broken down into several factors; and the polarity-performance relationship is presented for every factor. Three sets of different factor polarity curves were found. One set shows a clearly positive effect of polarity on performance, although another set shows a clearly negative effect. A third set shows a more complicated relationship, which indicates that these factors can be further distilled. These relationships are explainable and provide input for further research leading to a useful polarity-performance strategy for virtual product development teams.

The compatibility of future doctors' career intentions with changing health care demands

Background  In the Netherlands the medical education system is in the process of being transformed to establish a more demand‐oriented health care system. This transformation may entail the occupational restructuring of the medical profession. Meanwhile, on the supply side, the career intentions of future doctors are also changing.

Images of new product success: a case study in search of local validity

Purpose – This paper aims to measure new product success within a Dutch mailing company and to hypothesize that there exists no definition of new product success which is generally applicable, or valid in all circumstances. It seeks to opine that the best that can be achieved is a “local” definition: a definition valid only in a specific local context. In this article, a method is described on how to develop such a local measure.Design/methodology/approach – To prevent this framing bias, a multidimensional scaling approach is used, in which data collection and analysis have relevant new product success features as output instead of input.Findings – The method was applied to a Dutch mailing company, and it was found that in this case only two dimensions of new product success were prevalent. These were ROI and customer acceptance. From this, it was inferred that local valid measures in this particular situation were only a subset of all measures of new product success mentioned in the literature. Originali...

Standardizing the segmentation index S3

The segmentation index S 3 of Baerveldt and Snijders (1994) is used in the research of social cohesion. However, as is often the case with network level measures, the index is sensitive to network size and density. Therefore, networks of different size or density are not easily comparable. Of course, this seriously limits the research using this index. In this article we propose a standardization of the segmentation index that solves this problem. The standardization uses the expected value and the maximum value of the index, within certain network types, the so-called network families. We show how these values can be calculated. Furthermore, we present a figure that can be used to derive the expected values and a table for easy determination of the maximum values for all network families existing of 4 to 20 members. This allows the calculation of the standardized index for all networks within these families.

A Generalized Classification Model for Information Architecture Specification

This paper presents a formal model for information architecture specification. Because the model has also an interpretation in cell manufacturing formation, and reasonable effective techniques for solving this latter problem are available, these techniques can also be applied to information architecture specification.