Over the past decade, there has been a rapid increase in the number of initiatives involving "for-profit" private health care providers in national tuberculosis (TB) control efforts. We reviewed 15 such initiatives with respect to contractual arrangements, quality of care and success achieved in TB control. In seven initiatives, the National TB Programme (NTP) interacted directly with for-profi...

When the online stores and the logistics service providers make decision alone, as trade off phenomenon exists, inventory costs achieve the minimum while transportation costs are not the minimum or the opposite situation occurs. When implementing inventory and transportation integrated optimization, the profit of the whole supply chain and the stores increases, while the profit of the logistics...

Entrepreneurs who start new firms may choose not-for-profit status as a means of committing to soft incentives. Such incentives protect donors, volunteers, consumers and employees from ex post expropriation of profits by the entrepreneur. We derive conditions under which completely self-interested entrepreneurs opt for not-for-profit status, despite the fact that this status limits their abilit...

This article critically questions the commercialization of hospice care and the ethical concerns associated with the industry's movement toward "market-driven medicine" at the end of life. For example, the article examines issues raised by an influx of for-profit hospice providers whose business model appears at its core to have an ethical conflict of interest between shareholders doing well an...