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Six sigma programs are raging through corporations worldwide, with some corporations citing savings in the $US billions resulting from six sigma implementation. Six sigma has both proponents and detractors with some arguing that nothing new is involved and others identifying it as revolutionary. The view espoused herein argues for six sigma as a methodology within the larger framework of total quality management – a blend of old and new in the sense that the tools of six sigma are often familiar ones, but are applied with an eye that is more strategically focused than historic use of those tools ordinarily indicates.

Customer satisfaction has become a key factor in the strategic work of many universities towards the increasing competition regarding student recruitment. This paper presents a systematic approach to the course development process where focus is put on student satisfaction and learning. The approach consists of a combined usage of several methods, such as quality function deployment and conjoint analysis, that together transform student needs into quantified course attributes. In the paper, a two‐semester graduate course has been developed where the combined usage of the applied methods has shown itself to be very powerful when designing services from student satisfaction and learning perspectives. The outcome of the study is a university course where pedagogical and learning aspects have been combined with contents and work approaches with substantial interest for the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and explore important quality-related challenges facing organizations, and investigate how current excellence models incorporate these challenges.

The paper is based on a Delphi study of Swedish organizations. Forty-nine challenges were generated and ranked according to importance and the ten top-ranked challenges were compared to the principles of four excellence models.

The excellence models still seem to be relevant since their content matches many of the identified challenges. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the Swedish Institute for Quality models were found to have the most comprehensive coverage, while the International Organization for Standardization model had limited coverage.

Three areas for further research were identified: first, how quality management (QM) can evolve in different contexts that have varying needs in terms of adaptive and explorative capabilities; second, the interfaces of QM and sustainability, and ways to understand how customers and stakeholders can be active contributors to improvements; and third, the roles of the owners and board of directors regarding QM, and how to organize and distribute responsibilities of the QM work.

There are three important challenges that future revisions of excellence models could address: first, making QM a strategic issue for company owners; second, involving customers in the improvement activities; and third, developing processes that are robust yet still easily adaptable.

The Delphi study identified upcoming challenges in the QM area based on input from 188 quality professionals.

Emphasis on quality improvement has been one of the most characteristic features of higher education policy in Nordic and other European countries during the 1990s. In Sweden, the universities’ work with quality management has been evaluated for several years. In January 2001, the National Agency of Higher Education in Sweden introduced a new comprehensive system for quality assessment. The Swedish assessment system stresses that the assessment should have as a corner‐stone the specific prerequisites for each university and subject, e.g. business administration and their development strategy. The comprehensive quality assessments of Swedish higher education institutions are discussed together with stimulating innovation and continuous improvement of higher education.

Consumption has generally become more fragmented, hedonic and individual specific, satisfying not only functional but also emotional needs. In parallel, customer satisfaction is now thought to be both a cognitive and affective response, and the closely related concept of job satisfaction is commonly seen as an emotional reaction. The reasoning within quality management does, however, still lean heavily toward cognitive judgements (i.e. performance ratings), the emotional component clearly being under explored. Further, performance variables have shown not to be significant in predicting satisfaction for certain “experience products”, the effect fully mediated by emotions. as a consequence a cognitive judgement based quality cocnept has lost its ability to predict satisfaction, which clearly contradicts with the modern quality definition, stressing quality as the ability to satisfy the customer. Emotions have however entered the quality discourse and it has been proposed that having customers that are merely feeling satisfied will not suffice. Instead, there has been a plethora of executive exhortations in the trade press calling on business to “delight the customer”. Strategies for doing so have however usually been imprecise and unclear, and the different drivers of delight and satisfaction are not well explored. This paper aims to complement the previous cognitive dominance by exploring the multiple emotional responses involved in customer satisfaction. A conclusion being that we currently are measuring something, in terms of satisfied, that is more or less independent of what we aim for, in terms of delight. It is also most likely that ‐ depending on the situation, product, and person – other positive and negative emotions are more important outcomes of purchase and usage than merely satisfaction. It is questioned whether a single, summary response such as satisfaction is feasible or even desirable.

The paper outlines a comprehensive three‐step approach to the development of advanced strategies for quality control of a complex machining process. The research framework is a developed concept for Integrated Supervisory Process Control. The promising results obtained demonstrate a non‐traditional approach to the deployment of quality and productivity requirements set by the system users, whereby the efficiency and systematization of the development of quality control strategies can be significantly improved.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to measuring health‐related quality management based on earlier research on the connection between quality management and employee health.

A questionnaire was developed and a research study was carried out at a manufacturing company. The constructs were tested for internal reliability using Cronbach's alpha tests. The dimensions’ correlations with employee health were checked using Pearson correlation.

Three of the dimensions were correlated with the perception of employee health: “presence/communication” and “integrity” derived from leadership commitment, and “influence” derived from everybody's participation. These findings substantiate earlier studies indicating a relationship between visible, clear leadership and employee health. They are also in line with earlier findings of how the possibilities to influence their own work promote employee health and work ability. The paper provides a proposal as to how managers can proceed in the measurement and evaluation of quality management efforts related to employee health.

The research is conducted as a single research study in one industrial manufacturing company. Further research should be conducted in other organizations from different lines of business with the same conditions and in organizations with different conditions.

This approach can be used by managers for gaining insight into underlying mechanisms in the organizational culture related to employee health from a quality management perspective. This could lead to improved employee well‐being, satisfaction and motivation. It could be used as a first step for improvements when implementing health‐related quality management “to break the ice” and it could be followed up by qualitative methods.

Traditional ways of measuring health are rarely connected to quality management. Only requiring small resources, this approach to measuring health‐related quality management can add to an understanding of underlying mechanisms.

The purpose of the paper is to contribute to the solution, and understanding, of the current lack of activity concerning the development of practices, such as engineering methods, for the creation of attractive quality. The current situation is clearly problematic given the important positive effects assigned to attractive quality in the literature.

First, different descriptions of attractive quality are examined in order to determine whether there is a common understanding of the concept. Second, the ability to manage attractive quality creation in accordance to a proactive ideal is approached by an examination of the current ability to predict the occurrence of attractive quality.

Two obstacles that currently hinder the development of practices for attractive quality creation are identified. The first obstacle is the diversity of meanings given to the concept of attractive quality, resulting in confusion about what to obtain. The second obstacle identified is the current lack of valid explanations to the occurrence of attractive quality, resulting in an inability to develop proactive practices.

The practical implications of bringing attention to, and overcoming, the two obstacles identified will potentially be substantial. A common attractive quality concept and valid explanations to the occurrence of attractive quality will constitute an essential base for the successful development of practices, such as engineering methods, for attractive quality creation.

The paper contributes via the identification of two critical areas in need of intensified attention and future research in order to facilitate the sought‐after development of practices for the creation of attractive quality.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the phenomenon of innovation in the current Swedish governmental administration system. More specifically, the paper explores the current understanding within the system of what innovation is, as well as why and how it should be achieved. Innovation is currently at the top of many agendas worldwide: not only in the private sector but also when it comes to increasing quality, efficiency and effectiveness in public administration. In Sweden, this is reflected in the recent call from the Government for innovation in public management. However, innovation has not traditionally occurred to any significant extent on the strategic level of Swedish public management. Furthermore, governmental administration is a complex system in need of coordination and alignment for this new call to be effectively realized in practice.

This paper has been based on a qualitative approach with a case consisting of three embedded units: the Government itself, a ministry and a Government agency. The data have been collected from documents and interviews.

This paper shows that there is currently a notable disparity when it comes to how aspects of innovation are understood at different levels within the Swedish governmental administration system. Furthermore, the recent business development to increase the standardization of work processes is perceived as having created poorer preconditions for working with innovations.

The results highlight critical areas of disparity and possibilities for improvement toward a shared understanding and aligned innovation actions within the system.

This paper contributes knowledge about the current understanding of innovation in the Swedish governmental administration system.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether healthy and successful organizations are working accordingly to Quality Management. The purpose is also to describe in more detail how they are working.

Three Swedish organizations that have shown excellence in leadership, internal partnership, working environment and profitability have been examined, to find out what methodologies they have used for their success. To discover whether these healthy and successful organizations are working accordingly to Quality Management, Deming's 14‐point list has been used as an analytical tool.

Identified methodologies used by the healthy and successful organizations are described. Viewed in the light of the analysis, a relationship between the three examined healthy and successful organizations and Quality Management is indicated.

Working with the methodologies described here, the three organizations have improved co‐worker health. Other organizations could probably adopt the identified and described methodologies to improve the health of their co‐workers and effectiveness in the organization.

Concerning the performance evaluation and the continuous improvement component in Quality Management, substantial contributions could be made to the health area by applying the tools that the quality area have used over a considerable period to improve the quality outcomes. Quality and health aspects have common success factors, and a focus on high quality could be seen as being positive for health outcomes.