Peter Lemaire and Dick Wanszink
Like medieval alchemists, quality modellers continue to search for a formula that will combine various elements of quality management into one unified whole. Evidence from…
Abstract
Like medieval alchemists, quality modellers continue to search for a formula that will combine various elements of quality management into one unified whole. Evidence from companies in The Netherlands suggests the dream of linking concepts is so far still unrealized.
The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things…
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The institution of food and cookery exhibitions and the dissemination of practical knowledge with respect to cookery by means of lectures and demonstrations are excellent things in their way. But while it is important that better and more scientific attention should be generally given to the preparation of food for the table, it must be admitted to be at least equally important to insure that the food before it comes into the hands of the expert cook shall be free from adulteration, and as far as possible from impurity,—that it should be, in fact, of the quality expected. Protection up to a certain point and in certain directions is afforded to the consumer by penal enactments, and hitherto the general public have been disposed to believe that those enactments are in their nature and in their application such as to guarantee a fairly general supply of articles of tolerable quality. The adulteration laws, however, while absolutely necessary for the purpose of holding many forms of fraud in check, and particularly for keeping them within certain bounds, cannot afford any guarantees of superior, or even of good, quality. Except in rare instances, even those who control the supply of articles of food to large public and private establishments fail to take steps to assure themselves that the nature and quality of the goods supplied to them are what they are represented to be. The sophisticator and adulterator are always with us. The temptations to undersell and to misrepresent seem to be so strong that firms and individuals from whom far better things might reasonably be expected fall away from the right path with deplorable facility, and seek to save themselves, should they by chance be brought to book, by forms of quibbling and wriggling which are in themselves sufficient to show the moral rottenness which can be brought about by an insatiable lust for gain. There is, unfortunately, cheating to be met with at every turn, and it behoves at least those who control the purchase and the cooking of food on the large scale to do what they can to insure the supply to them of articles which have not been tampered with, and which are in all respects of proper quality, both by insisting on being furnished with sufficiently authoritative guarantees by the vendors, and by themselves causing the application of reasonably frequent scientific checks upon the quality of the goods.
Evert de Haan, Peter C. Verhoef and Thorsten Wiesel
Attitudes, perceptions, and intentions of a firm's customers, which can be captured via customer feedback metrics (CFMs), provide valuable information about the state of a firm's…
Abstract
Attitudes, perceptions, and intentions of a firm's customers, which can be captured via customer feedback metrics (CFMs), provide valuable information about the state of a firm's customer base. CFMs can help capture the impact of marketing actions on future customer behavior and future firm performance, and thus can help make marketing become more accountable. CFMs have received much attention in marketing research and business practice since the 1970s. In this chapter, we provide a short historical overview of the development of, and research about, CFMs, we classify the different types of CFMs, we highlight the empirical findings of the drivers and consequences of CFMs, and we explore how CFMs can be integrated in a firm's customer dashboard in order to make marketing more accountable. We furthermore explore some of the challenges in accurately measuring CFMs, and in the end of this chapter, we provide information on how to capture CFMs in the age of social listening via modern tools involving text-, voice-, and video-mining.
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Handicraft entrepreneurship is an old form of entrepreneurship and recently has received increased interest due to more people becoming interested in handmade products. The aim of…
Abstract
Handicraft entrepreneurship is an old form of entrepreneurship and recently has received increased interest due to more people becoming interested in handmade products. The aim of this chapter is to describe different types of handicrafts including (1) textile based handicrafts, (2) wood, metal, clay, glass and stone made handicrafts, (3) handicrafts using paper or canvas, (4) plant based handicrafts and (5) other types of handicrafts such as cakes and candles. This enables a holistic understanding about the nature of handicrafts in society. Thereby making a contribution to the development of the literature on handicrafts and how they incorporate entrepreneurial elements. Theoretical and practical implications are stated that highlight the need for further understanding about the nature of handicraft entrepreneurship. Future research suggestions are also stated that stress the interesting nature of this field.
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Unfortunately, I am not the first to attempt to map out the narrative terrain of Others. In 1985, R. S. Perinbanayagam presented various social theorists’ conceptions of the Other…
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Unfortunately, I am not the first to attempt to map out the narrative terrain of Others. In 1985, R. S. Perinbanayagam presented various social theorists’ conceptions of the Other in his book Signifying Acts: Structure and Meaning in Everyday Life. Basically, they comprise three Others: the Generalized Other, the Meiotic Other (my language), and the Significant Other. I will address three additional Others – the Unconscious Other, the Marginalized Other, and the Nonhuman Other – that I find in a broader and more recent literature. Although I group them into six main Others, the borders of these types are somewhat arbitrary, porous, and nondiscrete, as interaction and intersection exist among them. Two characteristics that distinguish one Other from another are whether the Other exists within or outside the Self and whether the Other is an individual or aggregate entity. The Unconscious Other and the Generalized Other both are constructed from symbolic material outside the individual but ultimately take up residence within the Self. The Meiotic Self is the self-divided; there may be multiple divisions but each Meiotic Self is usually presented as singly constituted. The Significant Other, an individual, and the Marginalized Other, often a status group or member of it, reside outside the Self but play supporting roles in relation to any particular Self, which may also be an individual or status group, such as men, Whites, and Americans. The Nonhuman Other may be individual, an aggregate of individuals, or the product of human behavior, all of which reside outside the Self.
Sonia M. Ospina, Nuria Cunill-Grau and Claudia Maldonado
This chapter describes an institutional choice that most Latin American countries have taken in the past 25 years: the creation of national Public Performance Monitoring and…
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This chapter describes an institutional choice that most Latin American countries have taken in the past 25 years: the creation of national Public Performance Monitoring and Evaluation (PPME) systems. We summarize research assessing their institutionalization, identify their shortcomings, and discuss trends demonstrating a potential – not yet realized – to fulfill their vocation as instruments of political and democratic accountability. Despite remarkable progress in their institutionalization, the evidence suggests that the systems fall short in producing strong results-oriented democratic accountability. Key factors hindering this aspiration include the systems' low credibility, problems associated to their diversification, low institutional coherence, and lack of effective coordination mechanisms to improve information legibility, its quality, its usefulness, and thus its use by both public managers and citizens. We suggest that PPME systems depend on environmental conditions beyond government structures and processes and argue that citizen-oriented mechanisms and entry points for social participation around the systems are required to fulfill their accountability function.