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This paper aims to analyze the antecedents of two variables concerning the presence of quality certifications in hotel chains: the (ex ante) decision to become a member of the quality system and the (ex post) trend to increase or decrease the number of certified properties. Six hypotheses are posed and tested.

The empirical investigation is carried out on the Spanish Q for Quality in Tourism using a database including 295 hotel chains and 2,727 hotels.

The results evidence the presence of differences in the behavior of hotel chains relative to certification depending on their size, market segment, customer origin and the geographical concentration of their establishments.

This research deepens in how the hotel chain characteristics affect the effectiveness of a quality certification. The consideration of two stages in investment decisions allows the authors to identify differences in the ex ante and ex post decision processes. As a result, one factor (geographical concentration) has been detected as being underrated by managers in the first stage.

Este artículo analiza los antecedentes de dos variables relacionadas con las certificaciones de calidad en cadenas hoteleras: La (ex-ante) decisión de formar parte de un sistema de calidad, y la (ex-post) tendencia a incrementar o reducir el número de establecimientos certificados. Seis hipótesis han sido propuestas y contrastadas.

La investigación empírica ha sido desarrollada en el marco de la marca Q de calidad para el turismo en España usando una base de datos que incluye 295 cadenas hoteleras y 2,727 hoteles.

Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la presencia de diferencias en el comportamiento de las cadenas hoteleras en materia de certificación dependiendo de su tamaño, segmento de mercado atendido, origen de la clientela y del grado de concentración geográfica de sus establecimientos.

El artículo profundiza en cómo las carfacterísticas de la cadena hotelera afectan a la eficacia de la certificación de calidad. Tener en consideración la existencia de dos etapas en las decisones de inversión nos permite identificar diferencias entre los procesos de decisión ex-ante y ex-post. Como resultado, hemos observado que un factor (la concentración geográfica) está siendo infravalorado por parte de os directivos en sus decisiones en la primera etapa.

This paper examines the relationships between: (1) motives for internalization of a quality system, (2) the internalization of a quality system and (3) customer results, employee results and social results in public organizations by means of replication research

First, the work applies a quantitative study to test hypotheses using structural equations based on the Partial Least Squares (PLS) approach. Then, a qualitative study is carried out to support the quantitative results obtained

Results show that internal and external motives affect internalization, and that the most important issues for internalization are commitment, communication, training, recognition and follow-up. In addition, continuous improvement is key in order to enhance customer results, employee results and social results

The contribution of this work is that it provides empirical support to prior research on internalization focused on manufacturing and service organizations, and extends these results to the case of public organizations

Este trabajo analiza la relación entre: a) los motivos para interiorizar un sistema de calidad, b) la interiorización de un sistema de calidad y c) los resultados de clientes, empleados y sociedad en organizaciones públicas, a través de un estudio que replica los análisis previos sobre interiorización realizados en organizaciones manufactureras y de servicios.

Interiorización de la calidad en organizaciones públicasPara conseguir este objetivo se realiza primero un estudio cuantitativo para comprobar las hipótesis a través de un análisis de ecuaciones estructurales desde el enfoque Partial Least Squares (PLS). Posteriormente se realiza otro estudio cualitativo para apoyar los resultados cuantitativos obtenidos.

Los resultados muestran que los motivos internos y externos influyen en la interiorización y que los aspectos más importantes para interiorizar un sistema de calidad son la implicación, la comunicación, la formación, el reconocimiento y el seguimiento interno. Además, la mejora continua es clave para mejorar los resultados de clientes, empleados y sociedad.

La contribución del trabajo es que proporciona apoyo empírico a los resultados de trabajos previos sobre interiorización centrados en organizaciones manufactureras y de servicios y extiende estos resultados al caso de organizaciones públicas.

In order to meet the increasingly demanding needs of international markets, quality and food safety systems have become widespread among companies in the agri-food sector. This has led to a transformation of the agri-food sector that has also been detrimental for companies seeking to adopt such standards. Therefore, the aim of this paper is to define the determining factors that affect the process of adopting quality and food safety standards in agri–food companies, from the implementation of standards in company quality management systems to the process of certification of these standards.

To this end, a literature review is carried out in which the motivations, benefits, barriers and contingency factors are identified, analyzing and delimiting the scope and contribution of each of them to the company’s quality management.

The results show that the most important benefits and motivations are access to new markets and compliance with legislation, while the most important barrier is the high cost of adopting QFS systems within the company. Finally, the most relevant contingency factor when adopting these systems is the size of the company. Furthermore, the analysis shows that the results are closely interrelated. In conclusion, the consideration of the determinants identified in the paper contributes to a better implementation of agri-food quality and safety standards by companies.

This paper combines an analysis of the determining factors for the adoption of quality systems in the agri-food industry with the identification of contingency factors that, despite their importance throughout the process, are scarcely analysed in the rest of the literature. Finally, the work points out future lines of research that are still underexplored, such as the relationship between quality assurance and financial development; the role of contingency factors in the process of adopting these systems and the analysis of HACCP systems in the agri-food sector.

Quality costs have been discussed widely in the literature. This discussion has not always agreed and it is possible to identify two basic schools of thought; one asserts the existence of a minimal level of quality cost for a given level of prevention and appraisal activities, and the other asserts that through prevention quality improvement is constant. This paper summarises these positions and outlines a behaviour model of quality costs that unifies and clarifies them. The behaviour model is based on the consideration of the cumulative effects of prevention. Ceteris paribus, continuous prevention activities should permit quality improvements whilst at the same time reducing the costs necessary to obtain them. The behaviour model introduces the effect of external quality requirements in an attempt to explain how, over time, quality improvement efforts do not necessarily result in decreased quality costs as customers’ quality requirements rise over the same period.

The purpose of this paper is to examine both the sources of competitiveness of small and medium- sized enterprises (SMEs) in the services industry measured by their capability to grow, and the relative importance of each of these sources. More specifically, the resources and capabilities of Spanish SMEs in the services industry that may become sources of competitive advantage are analysed.

In order to achieve this objective, this paper is organized as follows. First, a concise overview of prior research on determinants of performance of SMES is provided, outlining the role of factors regarding resources and capabilities. Second, a set of lineal regression models are performed to test the hypothesis research. In line with several previous studies, competitive success and performance of the company are approached through the recent evolution of firms in terms of employment, turnover and productive investment. The data set comes from a survey on Spanish SMEs operating in the services industry that was carried out between the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011.

The findings reveal that entrepreneur characteristics, firm features and managerial attributes have significant effect on the business performance. The results from the empirical analysis indicate that competitive success of the Spanish SMEs in the service industry is conditioned by macroeconomic and social factors related to the general business environment and especially by business factors concerning the entrepreneurial orientation of the firm, these findings are consistent with those of earlier research conducted at both an international level a national level.

The fundamental contribution of SMEs to the overall performance of the economy constitutes a crucial motive for researchers to investigate and examine the key success factors behind these enterprises. This issue has been analysed exhaustively for the manufactured goods industry, but has scarcely been addressed for the services industry. Thus, further research is needed to clarify the variables explaining survival and success for services SMEs. Furthermore, since this research is focused on the microeconomic level, by considering the firm as the unit of analysis, it contributes towards complementing previous research on this topic that has been conducted from a macroeconomic approach. Thus it attempts to provide certain empirical evidences for support the traditional academic debate between economic and administrative disciplines concerning the appropriate unit of analysis for the understanding and explanation of businesses competitiveness.

The objective of this study was to evaluate and compare how school heads and teachers perceived the impact of implementing ISO 9001 Standards on the dimensions management and planning and support and recognition.

The study included 2,192 subjects (86.2% teachers and 13.8% heads) belonging to 85 schools in four Spanish autonomous communities (Castilla y León, Community of Madrid, Andalusia and Community of Valencia). We used an instrument made up of 25 items evaluating both dimensions (Cronbach's α = 0.961). We conducted descriptive and differential analyses (applying ANOVA and calculating the effect size) overall and for the assessments by heads and teachers.

Results show a higher impact in small private schools with state subsidies, with 9–11 years of ISO implementation and receiving internal aid or none at all. The impact was medium–high on the management and planning system and medium–low on support and recognition, with heads evaluating at a significantly higher level the impact of ISO 9001 standards on improvement of preparation of classroom timetables, meetings, analysis of staff expectations and recognition of staff achievements.

Implementation of quality management systems in education has increased significantly in the last decades, and it is thus necessary to find evidence on how the resulting improvements are generated in schools. This study provides conclusions to the scientific and professional community about how school heads and teachers perceived the impact of implementing ISO 9001 standards on the dimensions management and planning and support and recognition.

The purpose of the paper is to describe the main features of a university library quality management system, focusing specially on internal auditing.

Adopting a case study approach, the paper attempts to show how auditing is a useful information management tool to improve library services.

Internal auditing helps to consolidate the culture of quality and promote appropriate ethics and values.

The paper is based on a study case and the professional experience of the author.

A view on a consolidated library's quality management system is presented in the paper.

The paper provides ideas on how a library approaches an internal audit.

This study has the main aim of analyzing the influence of six factors on ISO 9001 implementation: Economic Development, Exporting to Europe, Reputation, Competitiveness, Innovation and Business Sophistication. As a complement, a new factor relating to quality by country has been added: the World Quality Scoreboard.

Hypotheses are proposed that establish a (positive or negative) linear relationship between the diffusion of ISO 9001 and the indicators of the different factors analyzed in each country. The SPSS program was used to evaluate the hypotheses using data from 2009 to 2018.

The results indicate strong positive relationship for the country's economic development only when countries with low levels of income are considered. For the rest of the variables, the results indicate that their behavior varies according to the degree of development of the countries. When only developed countries are considered, significant and negative correlations are obtained for reputation, competitiveness, innovation and business sophistication, while considering the group of less developed countries, the results are reversed. The new World Quality Scoreboard has the same behavior whereas regarding exports; we did not obtain conclusive results.

This study adds important information on the studying of ISO 9000 phenomenon diffusion/evolution by analyzing the effect of six variables on the degree of implementation of the ISO 9001 standard in different countries. This information is interesting for companies and certification bodies across the world because it allows a better understanding of the reasons and conditions of implementing a quality management system.

This paper intends to illustrate an application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess library performance from an efficiency standpoint.

DEA modeling was applied to a convenience sample of 37 libraries affiliated to a federal university in Rio de Janeiro. Data were collected from the university's managerial database and refer to three inputs – number of employees, area and number of volumes – and four outputs – consultations, loans, enrolments and (user) traffic. Markovian analysis of transitions between efficient and inefficient states along time allowed a long‐term distribution between those states to be computed.

The retained DEA model provides a list of estimated scores that quantify efficiency status for each library unit and from which both rankings and operation plans can be determined for each unit to assist managers in their quest for library efficiency. In fact, (re)allocative measures, expressed as operation plans, indicate that, for each unit, some input(s) may be decreased and nonetheless some output(s) will increase. Those indicators may also be used to further or avoid either promised or planned changes.

As long as the efficiency principle is accepted the paper provides a three‐step procedure whereby any set of library units may be simultaneously assessed and ranked in relative terms and a set of quantitative operation plans may be used to (re)direct inefficient units toward efficiency. Whenever historical (e.g. annual) data are available, more adequate long‐term efficiency profiles will be computed, as well as some (e.g. yearly) durations relating to time spent in or before visiting (in)efficiency states. This model, combining short‐ and long‐term assessment, may be seen as a novelty contributed by the paper.