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A research company has studied the use which organizations make of their property and the future plans which they have for it. The results of the study are encouraging for suppliers of products and services in the property sector.

The purpose of this study is to integrate findings of empirical studies regarding the effect of total quality management (TQM) on competitive advantage. This purpose is to support building a theoretical model of TQM and its components. These components are: top management commitment/leadership, teams, culture, training/education, and process efficiency; they are grounded in the work of Deming and deduced from three other models offered by Dean and Bowen and Reed et al.

This study employed a meta‐analysis to synthesize results of a sample of 51 studies into, effectively, one database. The meta‐analysis approach is used to establish external validity for the theoretical model of TQM used in the paper. The sample includes studies that were conducted in different countries to provide a comprehensive investigation.

Each individual component of TQM was associated with competitive advantage, that these associations each explain roughly 60 percent of the variability in competitive advantage, and that a 1 point change in an average component score (1‐5 Likert scale) results in at least a 0.1 point change in competitive advantage.

The strong correlations between the five components, coupled with the limited sample size, made it impossible to fit a competitive advantage explanation model that included all five components with any statistical significance. Thus, it was not possible to determine the relative impacts of the five components on competitive advantage. Moreover, these limitations made the impact of leadership relative to other variables indeterminate, even in two independent variable models.

Despite the modest findings, this study provides a link between the theory and practice of TQM efforts and provides direction for future research.

Theory building efforts in quality management have begun in earnest. However, while services continue to dominate the developed economies of the world, these studies have mostly focused on manufacturing firms. Research that addresses this limitation by specifically addressing quality management in service organizations is presented in this paper. Through a survey of 170 US service firms, this study empirically develops and validates 11 constructs for quality management in services. A comparison between this study and other empirical quality management studies highlights many distinct quality management constructs in services. It also shows that all empirical studies have some gaps in the coverage of their constructs, reiterating the need for continued quality management theory building research in services and manufacturing.

Total quality service (TQS) is a socio‐technical approach for revolutionary and effective management. However, the contemporary quality management literature is overridingly manufacturing oriented and there seems to be a dearth of comprehensive studies (from the management’s perspective) addressing the critical dimensions of TQS that will depict a holistic TQM philosophy in service organizations. The present study is an earnest endeavour to fill this void. Based on a thorough review of the prescriptive, practitioner, conceptual and empirical literature, the study has identified 12 dimensions as crucial for the inculcation of a TQM ambience in a service set‐up. The criticality of each of these dimensions from a service perspective is corroborated in detail. An instrument for measuring TQS with specific reference to the banking sector has been developed. Data have been collected from executives from banks in a developing economy. The instrument has been empirically tested for unidimensionality, reliability and construct validity using a confirmatory factor analysis approach. A model for TQS has also been proposed, illustrating the relationships between the various dimensions. The present research work offers a systematic framework for the conceptual and empirical understanding of TQS and its critical factors.

This study develops an integrated theory about how Total Quality Management (TQM) based capabilities can be leveraged for Environmentally Responsible Manufacturing (ERM). It suggests that efforts should be coordinated to take advantage of the potential synergies between TQM and ERM. The means for capturing these synergies might be accomplished by using the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) framework. The MBNQA framework was adapted to address environmental issues and it was shown that the framework can be used as a basis for an integrative definition of ERM. This adaptation of the MBNQA framework suggests that there is an environmental version of the MBNQA framework and that quality principles can be seamlessly integrated into the practice of managing environmental issues. However, an empirical examination of the linkage between TQM and ERM remains untested. The findings of this study provide an important foundation for accomplishing this goal.

This paper seeks to examine the difference between manufacturing and service firms with respect to the implementation of total quality management (TQM) practices, and the relationship of these practices to quality performance.

The empirical data were collected from 194 managers of Australian firms with an approximately equal proportion of manufacturing and service firms.

The finding indicates no significant difference in the level of most of TQM practices and quality performance between the two sectors. This supports the positive argument concerning the applicability of TQM practices in the service firms despite several differences in the nature of their operations compared to their manufacturing counterparts. Furthermore, using structural equation modelling (SEM) technique, this study has shown that TQM construct based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria is valid across both industry sectors, and its relationship with quality performance also indicates insignificant difference between the two sectors.

From a managerial point of view, the results confirm the applicability of TQM principles in both manufacturing and service sectors and the validity of the MBNQA criteria in operationalising TQM principles into a set of organizational practices.

The study contributes to the knowledge in terms of cross‐validating the TQM construct in the manufacturing and service sectors. It also differentiates from the earlier studies in the area by simultaneously testing the TQM construct and its relationship with quality performance in both sectors.

This empirical study explores the relationship between total quality management (TQM) practices and organizational culture with the purpose of identifying the particular cultures that determine the successful implementation of TQM practices. Specifically, it tests two competing views on the relationship; the unitarist and pluralist views.

The empirical data was drawn from 194 organizations in Australia. The research model employs the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria as TQM framework and builds on the competing values model to frame organizational culture. The data was analysed using structural equation modelling technique.

The findings support the pluralist view, wherein different subsets of TQM practices are determined by different types of cultures. Interestingly, hierarchical culture was found to have a significant relationship with certain practices of TQM. Additionally, the findings indicate that although the cultural factors underpinning different elements of TQM are dissimilar, even antagonistic, organizations can implement them in harmony.

The major implication of this study is that organizations need to accommodate divergent goals by developing a system and/or structure that allows enough flexibility for adapting different (even contrasting) management styles, between control and flexibility and between internal and external orientations, so that they may gain benefits from the multiple dimensions of TQM.

This paper provides empirical evidence on the multidimensionality of TQM practices along with their association with different types of culture.

This paper aims to investigate the role of quality management (QM) practices in the success of strategic alliances.

Through a review of the literature, a conceptual model employing a relational view of inter‐organizational competitive advantage is proposed, which attempts to address the concept of quality management in strategic alliances and networks.

Trust and co‐operative learning have emerged as critical factors that affect the success of strategic alliances. The proposed model, while integrating elements of quality management and strategic alliances, determines alliance success and alliance satisfaction as the outcomes of strategic alliances. Several propositions have been developed to address the relationship between different constructs in the model. The effects of trust and co‐operative learning on alliance performance are discussed, and key areas for research are identified.

Companies can achieve a higher level of performance and satisfaction from alliances.

While previous research on quality management has been focused on the implementation of quality management within a firm, by extending the concept of quality management to strategic alliances this paper expands quality management implementation beyond the traditional view of quality.

The keys to effective service recovery are familiar to many throughout industry and academia. Nevertheless, overall customer satisfaction after a failure has not improved, and many managers claim their organizations cannot respond to and fix recurring problems quickly enough. Why does service recovery so often fail and what can managers do about it? This paper aims to address these issues.

The objective is to produce an interdisciplinary summary of the growing literature on service recovery, bringing together what each of the author's domain – management, marketing, and human resources management – has to offer. By contrasting those three perspectives using 141 academic sources, nine tensions between customer, process, and employee recovery are discovered.

It is argued that service recovery often fails due to the unresolved tensions found between the conflicting perspectives of customer recovery, process recovery, and employee recovery. Therefore, successful service recovery requires the integration of these different perspectives. This is summarized in the following definition: “Service recovery are the integrative actions a company takes to re‐establish customer satisfaction and loyalty after a service failure (customer recovery), to ensure that failure incidents encourage learning and process improvement (process recovery) and to train and reward employees for this purpose (employee recovery).”

Managers are not advised to directly address and solve the nine tensions between customer recovery, process recovery, and employee recovery. Instead, concentrating on the underlying cause of these tensions is recommended. That is, managers should strive to integrate service recovery efforts based upon a “service logic”; a balance of functional subcultures; strategy‐driven resolution of functional differences; data‐based decision making from the seamless collection and sharing of information; recovery metrics and rewards; and development of “T‐shaped” employees with a service, not just functional, mindset.

This paper provides an interdisciplinary view of the difficulties to implement a successful service recovery management. The contribution is twofold. First, specific tensions between customer, process and employee recovery are identified. Second, managers are offered recommendations of how to integrate the diverging perspectives.

Observation is a neglected data collection method in higher education research. Yet observation holds out the promise of seeing what people actually do, rather than what they say they do (in interviews or surveys) or write down that they do (in documents). It may also be pursued quantitatively and/or qualitatively, using a highly structured data collection instrument or in an open-ended and flexible fashion, carried out live or using recorded material. This chapter explores the limited existing literature on the use of observation in higher education research, speculates on the reasons for its lack of use, and argues for its greater usage in the future.