Pierre A. Balthazar and Vidyaranya B. Gargeya
Over the last decade quality function deployment or QFD, thanks tothe efforts of Akao and others, has gained widespread popularity in itsapplicability to business and industry…
Abstract
Over the last decade quality function deployment or QFD, thanks to the efforts of Akao and others, has gained widespread popularity in its applicability to business and industry. Many organizations have adopted it as a tool of continuous improvement in their quest for quality through total quality management (TQM). QFD in simple terms, has been looked on as a mechanism of translating the customers’ expectations of a particular product or service into product planning, parts development, process planning, and production planning. Explores the robustness of QFD for translating the available knowledge within a product design group into appropriate design choices, ones that consider the customer’s view of quality throughout the product’s entire life cycle. Conventional QFD analysis allows equity of participation through “consensus”, but often trades outcomes influenced by expertise for those attained with “fairness”. This process may lead to less than optimal results. Discusses the role of group support systems (GSS) to improve the qualitative discussion of the whats and the hows in the QFD process. Also introduces influence allocation processes, methods that allow differential weighting of participants and an incremental usage of knowledge within groups. Discusses their potential impact for QFD analysis.
Details
Keywords
The following list is a first attempt to catalogue and describe systematically the British Museum's extensive holdings of early opera librettos and related plays. The great…
Abstract
The following list is a first attempt to catalogue and describe systematically the British Museum's extensive holdings of early opera librettos and related plays. The great importance of these unpretentious booklets as supplementary and, more often than not, even primary sources for the history and bibliography of dramatic music, besides or instead of the scores, was already clearly recognized in the eighteenth century by Dr. Burney and other scholars. But it is only since 1914, the year in which O. G. T. Sonneck's Library of Congress Catalogue of opera librettos printed before 1800 appeared, that their documentary value could to any greater extent be put to general use in international musicological research. A similar bibliography of the British Museum librettos, while naturally duplicating many Washington entries, would produce a great number of additional tides, not a few of them otherwise unrecorded; it would provide the musical scholar with the key to a collection unequalled elsewhere in Europe, which owing to the peculiar nature of the material is not easily accessible by means of the General Catalogue.
Based on a formalization of the 1981 constitutional negotiation in Canada, this article analyses the impact of procedural constraints on collective decisions. Four procedural…
Abstract
Based on a formalization of the 1981 constitutional negotiation in Canada, this article analyses the impact of procedural constraints on collective decisions. Four procedural constraints are considered: voting procedures, voting rules, decision rules, and the order of presentation of options to the vote. Sincere voting (voting according to a voter's preference scale), complete information, and free communication are assumed in the first part of the analysis. The assumption of sincere voting is relaxed in the second part where strategic voting is considered The analysis shows that (1) a collective decision is determined by some interaction of voters' preferences, procedural constraints, and voting strategies, and (2) procedural constraints can be ordered in terms of their relative impact on the collective decision (in decreasing order: decision rules, voting rules, order of presentation, voting procedures). In the conclusion, a general model of the determination of collective decisions is presented.
Corporate marketing is a marketing and management paradigm which synthesises practical and theoretical insights from corporate image and reputation, corporate identity, corporate…
Abstract
Purpose
Corporate marketing is a marketing and management paradigm which synthesises practical and theoretical insights from corporate image and reputation, corporate identity, corporate communications and corporate branding, among other corporate‐level constructs. The purpose of this paper is to explain the nature and relevance of corporate marketing and to detail the antecedents of the territory.
Design/methodology/approach
Via the adoption of a quadrivium; a traditional classical approach to the acquisition of knowledge, the paper shows how organisations can be faced by Apocalyptical scenarios through a failure to accord sufficient attention to one or more dimensions of the corporate marketing mix; explains why the emergence of corporate level constructs such as corporate image, identity, branding communications and reputation represents, both individually and collectively, the Advent of corporate marketing; details the various integrative initiatives in corporate design, corporate communications and identity studies which, together with the incremental augmentation of the marketing philosophy, find their natural dénouement in the Epiphany of corporate marketing; and describes the 6Cs of the corporate marketing mix and reflects on possible future directions in organisational marketing.
Findings
The paper reveals the efficacy of adopting an organisation‐wide corporate marketing philosophy to management decision makers and scholars.
Practical implications
Drawing on the marketing/management theory of identity alignment policy the paper accords attention to each dimension of the corporate marketing mix and ensures that they are in meaningful as well as in dynamic alignment.
Originality/value
The practical utility of corporate marketing is explicated by making reference to case vignettes, and various marketing and non‐marketing literatures.