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In this research, we investigate the relationships between organizational adoption and extent of use of Quality Management (QM) programmes and Information Systems (IS) in two somewhat diþ erent organizational settingsÐ health care and non-health care. Speci® cally, we contend that organizations from the two settings may vary considerably in what we term QM Maturity. Some organizations appear to adopt QM only super® cially, while others move far more fully into QM. We use the term QM Maturity to describe organizations that have adopted QM programmes more fully and in`better' ways qualitatively. Are there diþ erences in the paths which health care and non-health care organizations have used in approaching and implementing QM? In this research, we contend that QM Mature organizations will be characterized by perceptions that the culture is diþ erent in ways that are supportive of QM. Moreover, we argue that the higher QM Maturity organizations will approach IS implementation in more mature, qualitatively better ways. In turn, we expect QM Maturity and more mature IS adoption to lead to perceptions by those in the organization that both organizational performance and service quality are better. Where there are diþ erences between health care and non-health care organizations, these areas could be impacted upon as well. Our exploratory research provides support for these ideas and suggests that there may, in fact, be diþ erences in the two settings.

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractWe study the effect of secondary markets on equity-linked life insurance contracts with surrender guarantees. The policyholders are assumed to be boundedly rational in giving up their contracts, and a proportion of policyholders will access the secondary markets instead of surrendering the contracts to the insurance company. We formulate the valuation problems from both the insurance company's and the policyholders' perspectives and characterize the contract values by deriving the respective pricing PDEs. Comparative statics are derived indicating the effect of the level of the policyholder's rationality and secondary market characteristics such as accessibility and competition on the contract values. The pricing PDEs are solved numerically via the Crank-Nicolson scheme to study the implication of the inclusion of a secondary market. We show that a secondary market generally increases the risk borne by the insurance company and the policyholders profit from the secondary market only when the secondary market is sufficiently competitive. Furthermore, we derive the necessary condition for the existence of a fair contract in this context and study the effect of the secondary market on fair contract design.

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