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Depending on the orientation and thinking, “quality” can be considered to be “free” or “to be paid for”. Industrial revolution in different parts of the world started at different times and now there is a consensus that quality, like any other commodity, has to be paid for. Suggests that the boardroom is concerned with quality only when it is expressed in terms of lost profit as a ratio of sales turnover or a similar measure. It is therefore important that the cost of quality is used as a management tool and as an indicator of the economic health of the organization. Reveals that there is some evidence in the literature, supported by the results of our survey, that organizations are sceptical about the real strength of this tool which was proposed, in the present format, by Joseph Juran in the 1950s. Highlights the importance and strength of this tool and establishes the relative position of the manufacturing sector in the UK through a detailed survey. Reports on the conclusions arrived at, and demonstrates that British manufacturing industry is ready to turn the corner.

Examines requirements of information professionals in the health sector, and ways career development can be enhanced. Includes analysis of job descriptions, categorising skills and roles, mapping profiles to other criteria, including health sector, and two statements for standards in higher education. Interviews with nine professionals confirmed findings of the job description analysis. There is a spectrum of skills, with clumps of traditional library skills, information analysis skills and a growing need for specialist skills. The statement provides a good basis for skills required. Providers need to encourage students towards “lifelong learning” to meet changing requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key supply chain variables, on which the practitioner should focus, to make supply chains of manufacturing enterprises more agile. Further, these variables are structured to determine their interactive behavior.

An interpretive structural modeling (ISM)‐based approach has been employed to model the agility variables of supply chains. These variables have been categorized into five levels based on their driving power and dependence.

The paper identifies various enablers used by researchers and practitioners for flexibility, integration and responsiveness to customers needs. ISM is used to establish mutual relationships among these enablers and to prepare a hierarchy‐based model.

The index of enablers, based on driving power and dependency provides useful insights to supply chain managers in identifying strategic variables having high driving power and effective use of these can help in achieving the corporate goals.

By presenting enablers in the form of hierarchy using ISM and ranking them into various driving power and dependent categories, this paper is an attempt to develop insights related to agile supply chains in the Indian context.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an initial survey on the implementation of costs of quality (CoQ) programmes in the UK telecommunications industry and to discuss the findings in the context of sustainable competitiveness.

A postal survey was employed in order to investigate the breadth of use of CoQ programmes in the sector. A questionnaire was developed and distributed across a sample of companies with a UK SIC code of “6400 Telecommunications”.

The survey results revealed little interest in implementing such programmes in the sector. The most frequently cited reasons were: having a costing system that is already capable of monitoring quality costs; and not yet introduced to the concept of CoQ.

The results presented are limited by two factors: the low response rate; and the range of data gathered. Since the majority of the respondents were service providers, the results could be indicative of this type of company only.

The survey findings indicate that training and education in quality management should employ a more focused approach to the introduction of the concept of CoQ tracking.

To the knowledge of the authors the study presented is the first investigation performed to determine the breadth of use of CoQ programmes across the UK telecommunications sector. In addition, a new aspect of researching the capabilities of information systems in processing CoQ data has been identified.

Uses the three quality dimensions of: systems; tools and techniques; and people, analyses the contribution of UK writers to the development of the body of knowledge known as total quality management (TQM). From examination of a range of source material (e.g. books, papers, postgraduate theses, and articles) it is clear that quality and TQM, within the UK, is still a subject of research and reporting. Those papers written by the academic fraternity tend to focus on the systems, and tools and techniques dimensions, whilst the more journalistic papers show a preference for people‐related issues. The examination reveals that the contribution of UK writers presents a rich and broad picture of TQM, however, a truly integrated view is not provided.

Measuring quality costs is an essential step for achieving competitiveness because these costs are strongly related to the company's annual revenue. One of the most important categories of quality costs is that of external failure costs. The consequences of these failures are not only related to the costs incurred to the failure in the field, but also to customer appeasement Within this quality cost category there are the claims against warrant. The warranty, which is a contract between a manufacturer and the consumer, specifies that the manufacturer agrees to repair or replace the failed product within the predetermined warranty period. This paper deals with the assessment of external failures by presenting a case study on warranty costs. The findings demonstrated that warranty costs can be significant and their reduction very important. In the studied case, the assessment of warranty costs has proved to be feasible and effective.

This paper addresses the topic of knowledge transfer between firms that meet in multiple markets. Theoretical arguments are developed regarding the issues thought to influence the process of knowledge transfer between multimarket firms, in general, and also regarding the emergence and influence of macrocultures on this process. We use a structural equivalence lens to develop this theory, suggesting that multimarket competitors are likely to share macrocultures to the degree that their markets overlap. The structural equivalence of multimarket competitors influences the direction that they are likely to look for knowledge resources.

Through application of multi-level structural equation modeling as the data analysis technique, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the group-level impacts on a couple’s food choices during travel at a coastal destination.

Researchers obtained 380 individual questionnaires from 190 mixed gender couples (who eat oysters) in Charleston and Beaufort County, South Carolina, USA. Data were collected from both members of the couple during their vacation. Due to missing data and normality issues 5 couples and 30 individuals were eliminated. The remaining data were analyzed with SPSS 21 and EQS 6.2 with advanced confirmatory factor analysis and multi-level (ML) regression techniques.

The study results indicated that while women have a more negative attitude than men toward oysters, their intention to eat oysters during vacation is not different from their partner. By detecting the interdependency of responses of individuals within a couple, this study revealed that a ML approach is a more powerful way to understand the decision-making process of couples. Additionally the difference in the results of single- and ML models showed that the latter approach lowers the chance of Type 2 error and provides more accurate results.

In tourism decision-making literature, the focus has been mostly on the individual despite the collectivistic nature of tourism activity. The current study is the first to analyze a couple’s decision-making process at the group level. Furthermore by collecting data from both members of the group during their vacation, this study has distinguished itself from previous studies.