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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolution of top management’s understanding of product quality in Bulgaria since the end of communism. The study examines three specific areas: top management’s understanding of the term “quality”; top management’s understanding of the relationship between quality and business performance; and top management’s understanding of the impact of job position on quality.

The paper relies on a quantitative research approach by using data from a survey of 186 companies in Bulgaria.

The paper suggests that senior managers in Bulgaria continue to base their understanding of “quality” on a single approach (*a characteristic of the communist era), with the product-based and the user-based approaches currently being the two most common ones. At the same time, surprisingly enough, this study claims that senior management in Bulgaria is currently well aware of the importance of quality as a dimension of firm’s competitiveness, and is also highly conscious of its roles’ impact on product quality.

The results of this study are exclusively based on the case of Bulgaria and must be treated with caution in the case of other former communist states from the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region.

This paper has relevance for both managers and companies doing business in Eastern Europe.

This is the first paper to provide detailed analysis of the evolution of the understanding of “product quality” in CEE since the end of communism. Moreover, this paper applies, for the first time, Garvin’s five approaches to defining quality within a practical context.

This paper aims to present a review of extant literature representing attempts to define perceived quality and to propose a new definition. Perceived quality (PQ) is a well-researched, yet vaguely defined subject. Despite a plethora of PQ definitions suggested by various scholars, there is no consensus among researchers on what it really is. The main purpose of this study is to offer a conceptualization of PQ that different researchers and practitioners would agree upon.

This study adopted Garvin's five approaches to defining quality as a frame of reference. The paper utilizes a continuum of approaches to underscore the fact that PQ is neither totally subjective nor wholly objective. After a comprehensive analysis of available conceptualizations, the paper then proposes a new definition that captures the intricate nature of PQ and aligns its various perspectives.

The paper proposes a new definition of PQ as an impression of quality. Such a conceptualization of PQ aligns the various researcher perspectives of it. It also highlights the fact that PQ relies on quality cues under conditions of limited product knowledge by the consumer, a situation known as information asymmetry.

The study contributes to the understanding of the elusive concept of PQ by suggesting a new definition of PQ.

Uses survey results from a national sample of quality managers to examine the relationship between how a firm defines quality and what product quality dimensions it considers important to its competitive strategy. Garvin proposed a well‐known framework for thinking about product quality based on eight dimensions: performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. Alternative definitions of quality have evolved from five different approaches: transcendent, product‐based, user‐based, manufacturing‐based, and value‐based. Of the five approaches to defining quality, the manufacturing firms in our sample subscribed most often to the user‐based definition. Using regression analysis within a factor analytic framework, some empirical support was found for hypothesized linkages between the product quality dimensions and the alternative definitions of quality. Specifically, the user‐based definition was related significantly to aesthetics and perceived quality, the manufacturing‐based definition to conformance, and the product‐based definition to performance and features.

Services touch the lives of every person in every country every day. Today, intense global competition and increasing customer expectation have forced service firms to adopt various quality improvement approaches in retaining their competitive positions. Perhaps the most commonly used method for quality improvement is benchmarking. Although there exist a number of models for the implementation of benchmarking, a survey revealed that most companies still did not know how to benchmark. In this work, we address such a fundamental issue as the setting of quality goals in services systems in order to facilitate the application of universal models of benchmarking. We identified five elements of service operations, i.e., people, time, place, tangibles, and intangibles. We reviewed three methods for the identification of a firm’s quality problems. We proposed a matrix to deploy quality problems and presented key points in the selection of benchmarking partners.

In this study, an optimal green product is selected from three newly developed ecological products and a non-environmentally friendly product. An analytic network process (ANP), used widely for multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), is applied to account for the tradeoff issues among the criteria (quality, cost and green issue) in the new green product selection processes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

This paper focuses on current social and consumer requirements. New product selection processes consider three major perspectives, i.e., quality, cost and environment, as criteria. The following two main methods are applied to respond to this multi-disciplinary issue: the eight quality dimensions proposed by Garvin are used to manage the quality issue, and a life cycle costing (LCC) method is applied for consideration of the cost and green issue. Therefore, the dependency issue among the criteria is considered, using a suitably selected method, the ANP method, and all the methods are applied to a real business, which produces roof tiles, for the delivery of a new optimal green product.

An optimal environmentally friendly product does not overcome the existing toxic product of the focused company. The environmental performance is necessarily balanced by the quality and cost capabilities.

This paper focuses on the new product selection of roof tile products. The criteria or measuring indicators may be dissimilar, and cannot be applied to other products.

The proposed approach can be applied to other manufacturing companies or services to allow decision makers to make better determinations for a comprehensive dependency problem. The managers can apply the proposed model to benchmark the considered products as well as to find the weaknesses of products.

This method considers the relationship among quality, cost and environment for newly developed green products. The method produces better results than former MCDM studies which did not account for the dependency issue among the criteria.

Frugal innovation focuses on the core functionalities with the highest stakeholder benefits and directly targets user requirements. It has been widely adopted in developing countries, and extensively researched from both consumer and sustainable perspectives. However, few studies on frugal innovation consider “quality”, a seminal business management concept. This study focuses on this gap and uses a quality lens to understand frugal innovation.

This study adopts a mixed methodology. The Delphi focus group method is first applied to identify two cases of frugal innovation in the construction industry and a cross-case analysis done. Then, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is used to examine eight product quality dimensions to draw the final conclusions.

From Garvin’s concept of quality, frugal innovation focuses on performance and conformance. Furthermore, it prioritises a value-based approach the most.

This study examines frugal innovation from quality perspective. This opens up a new line of research which contributes to both streams. The study is based on construction which is a limitation of the study.

A quality-based frugal innovation understanding can be helpful in the conceptualisation, implementation and acceptance of the frugal innovation business model. It can provide clarity on the innovation's value proposition and also help in operationalisation of the business model.

Frugal encourages social entrepreneurs and understanding of the concept from quality perspective shall facilitate the operationalisation will become easier for them.

To the author’s knowledge, this is the first study at the interface of frugal innovation and quality management. Furthermore, the use of AHP to prioritise equality approaches and dimensions is an original contribution.

Quality is consistently listed as one of manufacturing’s top competitive priorities and has become a prerequisite for success in the global marketplace. Quality helps a firm gain a competitive advantage by delivering goods to the marketplace that meet customer needs, operate in their intended manner, and continuously improve quality dimensions in order to “surprise and delight” the customer. While quality’s significance has been emphasized for years, the contribution of quality to business performance has been largely unexplored. Results of a survey sent to the furniture industry show that quality dimensions ‐ especially design quality and product improvement ‐ are highly correlated with business performance. Quality remains the foundation of competitive advantage, even if a firm’s short‐term attention has drifted to speed‐to‐market, cost reduction and other concerns.

This paper examines the competitive dimensions of quality for first tier suppliers in the automotive industry. A theoretically relevant set of quality variables is identified from the literature. The results of a factor analysis show that quality is a two dimensional construct in the automotive supply industry. The core dimensions of quality are: product quality, which is primarily focused on design superiority and performance of the physical product; and service quality, which comprises both pre‐ and post‐sale service. The study reveals that both product quality and service quality are related to overall firm performance, regardless of whether asset based, investment based, or market based measures are used.

The article sets out primarily to fill in some of the gaps in the biography of Lucy Arabella Stocks Garvin (1851–1938), first principal of Sydney Girls High School. As a reflexive exercise stimulated by this biographical research, the second aim is to explore the transformative work of digital sources on the researcher's research processes that in turn generate possibilities for expanded biographical studies in the history of education.

This article encompasses two approaches: the first uses traditional historical methods in the digital sources to provide an expanded biography of Lucy Garvin. The second is a reflexive investigation of the effects of digitisation of sources on the historian's research processes.

The advent of digital technologies has opened up more evidence on the life of Lucy Garvin which enables a fuller account both within and beyond the school gate. Digital sources have helped to address important gaps in her life story that challenge current historiographical understandings about her: for example, regarding her initial travel to Australia; her previous career as a teacher in Australia and the circumstances of her appointment as principal; her private and family life; and her involvement in extra school activities. In the process of exploring Garvin's life, the researcher reflected on the work of digital sources and argues that such sources transform the research process by speeding up and de-situating the collection and selection of evidence, while at the same time expanding and slowing the scrutiny of evidence. The ever-expanding array of digital sources, despite its patchiness, can lead to finer grained expanded biographical studies while increasing the provisionality of historical accounts.

The article presents new biographical information about an important early female educational leader in Australia and discusses the impact of digital sources on archival and research processes in the history of women's education.

In this paper, the two main approaches employed up to now in quality‐related surveys, namely the technique‐oriented and the activity‐oriented ones, are discussed, showing their relative advantages and weaknesses. Then, a new method of surveying quality management, based on the analysis of quality‐related information flows, is presented and discussed. In order to illustrate the comparative advantages of this new measure‐oriented approach, some results from a field survey on Italian white goods manufacturers are discussed. Results provide evidence on the power of the new approach here presented to disclose new aspects of quality management that could have been overlooked by other approaches. Moreover, it is shown that the new approach is considerably more efficient than others in terms of time consumption for the data collection phase with respect to the depth of information collected.