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The growing interest in total quality management programmes is well‐known, although there is some concern that such programmes have, in practice, paid only limited attention to human resource management issues. Uses the findings of a primary case study and two secondary case studies to examine this particular proposition. The basic findings indicate that both the introduction and the operation of total quality management programmes require a consistent management approach, with particular effort being given to making complementary changes in related human resource management practices.

There are many features which have been regarded as having a critical role in supporting service quality. The purpose of this research is to identify which management practices support service quality.

A questionnaire survey of medium and large‐sized mass and technological services in the UK was conducted.

It was found that service quality and the management practices were all significantly associated in mass services, but this was not the case in technological services.

Further research should consider those management features which were found to be non‐contributory to service quality in technological services.

This research has clarified the ranking of the management practices in terms of the contribution they have made to support service quality, and also found the differences between the two types of services.

There are many features that have been regarded as having a critical role in supporting service quality. The purpose of this article is to identify those features that are fundamental in supporting service quality.

A literature review was conducted covering total quality management (TQM), internal marketing, and the service quality literature, especially the study of service quality gaps. All of these are concerned with the search for service excellence.

From a comparative study of these three areas of the literature, it was found that there are seven common features: recruitment and selection, training, teamwork, empowerment, performance appraisals and reward, communication, and culture of the organisation. Each of them is argued to be critical for the management of service quality.

Although there are other factors that can influence service quality, the identification of fundamental features provides managers and academics with a valuable framework with which to start in pursuit of service quality across a variety of service businesses.

Although management of service quality has been regarded as notoriously difficult due to the characteristics of services, by identifying fundamental features supporting service quality, this article provides focal points for the management of service quality.

The main objective of this paper is to theoretically investigate the human resources (HR) context and content on total quality management (TQM), business excellence and ISO 9000:2000.

The HR‐quality relationship has largely been ignored or underestimated. This paper investigates the existing literature and digs into the various approaches and frameworks in order to evaluate the rhetoric and the reality of this relationship. The examination of differences, similarities and convergence is of high importance in understanding the contribution of HR issues to all of these quality approaches.

Besides the “good stories” of implementation of the European Quality Award (EQA) model, the ISO 9000:2000 certification and TQM, the paper reveals a number of problematic areas in relation to effective HR utilization such as: low utilization of employees' skills and knowledge, lack of a vision and a mission for HR followed by systematic design and implementation of strategic human resource management (HRM) practices.

This is the first step towards an understanding of the current status of the HR context and content on TQM, business excellence and ISO 9000:2000. The paper addresses a series of issues concerning organizations worldwide in their road to quality improvement and business excellence. There is a need to further evaluate organizations by measuring their HR performance and the degree of quality implementation in the future.

The paper is aiming at both Quality and HR people within the organization. Quality cannot be achieved without fully utilization of organization's HR, and the HR function needs a new vision and practices that are focused on internal customer satisfaction.

The paper provides a reliable and objective depiction of the current status of the HR context and content on TQM, business excellence and ISO 9000:2000 through the examination and analysis of a state‐of‐the‐art literature review studies, including all the various approaches, practices and perceptions recorded so far in the literature ‐some of them based on empirical data and some deriving from rhetoric and “good‐stories” or “how things ought to be” perspective.

The paper presents the development of a continuous improvement process for the customer relations department at Severn Trent Water in the UK. In‐company research was carried out to identify the main barriers to continuous improvement in the areas of leadership, training, communication, motivation, teamwork, and change management. The study concluded that the company should develop an organisational culture and management style to support continuous improvement of daily working processes, and that change should be managed against the achievement of appropriate quality targets. A continuous improvement process was developed based on a structured problem‐solving model incorporating the application of established quality tools, to be applied by problem solving teams from the customer relations department. It was recommended that the team members should be trained in the problem solving process, and the related quality tools and techniques. Also, management should lead and support this approach by concentrating on team (rather than individual) performance achievement.

WE regret to learn that the Leyton Borough Council has followed the bad example of East Ham in transferring its library responsibilities from the ad hoc Library Committee to the Education Committee. The case is worse than that of East Ham in that the Borough Council is not the education authority and the library system, with its library staff, consisting of men of life‐long experience, will be handed over to the County Education Committee. Such transfers are not made in order to promote the efficiency of the library but because the Councils are under the delusion that by some species of financial legerdemain a library service will be provided without payment on their part. As the promoters of the 1919 Act certainly did not intend any such actions as this, we hope that the Library Association may be able to do something before the transfer takes effect. Our hope, we are bound to admit, is a faint one.

Taking instances from extant findings from the literature, the study aims to examine the community perception toward renewable energy (RE) off-grid (mini-grid/microgrid) intervention, the underlying rationales for engagement of communities in RE off-grid projects, the different alternatives/models to engage communities in various phases of RE off-grid project deployment.

The study has followed the structured literature review to explore the identified research question of the study.

Based on findings from the review, the framework for effective community engagement in RE mini-grid projects is suggested. Furthermore, the study also draws suggestions and implications for future research and practice.

Based on such understanding the present study offers the framework which suggests the steps for the engagement of the communities in the off-grid projects. The key steps are managing the perception of the community (including generation of awareness among the community), planning for the benefits of the community, linkage the sustainable development goals (SDG), planning for the inclusion of the community and measuring performance (in the line of social and economic criteria and SDG).

This study finds the gap in the literature on the nexus of community, off-grid energy projects and SDG. Following the findings from the scholars in this field, a few gaps in the policy and practice have been highlighted which could be useful for practitioners and policymakers in this area.