QUALITY MANAGEMENT

QUALITY MANAGEMENT

1. Quality management is a business practice that may have a positive influence on firm performance (Samson and Terziovski 1999, Huarng and Chen, 2002, Kaynak 2003, Parast et al., 2011).

2. BENEFITS OF THE ISO STANDARD

   • Quality management theory has developed from three distinct sources: contributions from quality gurus (e.g. Deming, Juran), formal assessment processes (e.g. the European Quality Award), and measurement studiesI
     • Quality performance
       • customer satisfaction, people results (e.g. employee morale), percentage of defects, cost of quality, quality product, on-time delivery and productivity.
     • Financial performance: accounting returns (returns on assets, returns

3. In order to study the benefits arising from the ISO 9001 standard, some analyses examine its effects through a list of benefits, whereas others base themselves on, or even propose, a classification of such benefits. Some of these classifications are the following:

   • • Internal benefits and external benefits (Casadesús et al., 2001). People results, operation results, customer results and financial results (Casadesús and Giménez, 2000). Operational performance and financial performance (Naveh and Marcus, 2004; Briscoe et al., 2005).
   • • Other classifications, including:
     • • Internal operations, benefits gained with respect to customer relations, and benefits gained with respect to subcontractor relations (Lee, 1998).
     • • Operational benefits, marketing benefits, human resources benefits (Nield and Kozak, 1999).

4. EFFECTS OF QUALITY ON ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT AND SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

   • Different scholars suggest that quality management (QM) practices facilitate the development of environmental management (Curkovic, 2003), require ethical behaviour (McAdam and Leonard, 2003), need a stakeholder focus (Waddock and Bodwell, 2004), and may facilitate the development of socially responsible activities (Withanachchi et al., 2007).

5. ADOPTION OF ISO 9001 IN CHINA: A BRIEF OVERVIEW

   • China is the country with the largest number of certificates in the world (having a total of 297,037 by the end of 2010), followed by Italy (with 138,892), Russian Federation (62,265), Spain (59,854) and Japan (59,287). Those 297,037 certifications granted in China account for more than 26 % of the world's total. In relative terms (see Table 1), China is also one of the region with the highest Intensity of Certification of the World.

6. QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

   • This paper aims to contribute to the debate about the usefulness of performance management practices in a Quality Management (QM) context, analyzing the extent to which performance appraisal and reward-considered by the literature as supportive of a QM initiative- moderate the positive influence of QM on performance.

7. METHODOLOGY PROPOSAL: ASSESSING SERVICE QUALITY IN A MULTI- CHANNEL ENVIRONMENT

   • One of the most important differences between traditional services and e-services is that, unlike the former, e-services are usually offered as part of a comprehensive multi-channel service package combining access to the Internet with other delivery channel services such as telephone and other physical facilities. Intrinsically, customers are thus often introduced to multi- channel behavior by being given the opportunity to use both physical and online channels.

8. ANTECEDENTS OF SATISFACTION IN ONLINE TRAVEL AGENCY SERVICES

   • The aim of this study was to determine whether e-quality dimensions are an antecedent of satisfaction when analyzing online commerce. A telephone survey of customers of online travel agencies was conducted, producing 1,201 valid questionnaires.

9. EXPLORING THE APPLICATION OF ISO 10001 AND ISO 10002 IN UNIVERSITY COURSES

   • This paper proposes the application of ISO 10001 and ISO 10002, the respective international standards focused on Customer satisfaction codes of conduct and Customer complaint handling (ISO 10001; ISO 10002) with the objective to establish, apply and monitor these codes for student satisfaction and quality assurance at a course level.