Background: Informal payments in the health sector of many developing countries are considered as a major impediment to health care reforms. Informal payments are a form of systemic fraud and have adverse effects on the performance of the health system. In this study, the frequency and extent of informal payments as well as the determinants of these payments were investigated in general hospita...

This research presents and analyzes an empirically grounded account of a new trend, open innovation, in the IT industry. The case depicts another new trend, innovation through customization of standard software as a business model, and we investigate the open innovation activities of an interorganizational network which consists of a small customizing company, a large global software producer, ...

Access to formal financial services is a key determinant of inclusion and yet, informal mechanisms still dominate the system in developing countries. In this context, purpose our article investigate how growing effort harness mobile money designed for unbanked individuals may help overcome barriers access services. Using unique dataset obtained from an individual-level survey conducted Burkina ...

As manufacturers require closer and closer links to geographically more diverse suppliers in order remain competitive, virtual teamworking is beginning to look attractive. However, the full benefits which closer communication are meant to bring require informal and free interaction among team members in a way which communications technology could block. We use case studies of two supply chain t...

PURPOSE The purpose of this report is to provide basic descriptive information on community-dwelling, disabled, private long-term care (LTC) insurance policyholders who have accessed policy benefits. We focus on how benefits are used, whether claimants feel they are getting appropriate value from their policies, and what the patterns are of formal and informal service use. DESIGN AND METHODS ...

This study explores laughter distribution around topic changes in multiparty conversations. The distribution of shared and solo laughter around topic changes was examined in corpora containing two types of spoken interaction; meetings and informal conversation. Shared laughter was significantly more frequent in the 15 seconds leading up to topic change in the informal conversations. A sample of...