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This study examines the performance between operational variables for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) within the context of interorganizational relationships. Specifically, it investigates the role of information quality and continuous quality improvement and the varying importance that SMEs place on each of these constructs. The sample consists of 134 vendors of a large university in the southwestern region of the United States.The results indicate that there is a positive relationship between information quality and continuous quality improvement with performance in SMEs. Implications for both research and practice, as well as ideas for future research, are discussed.

This study aimed to bridge the gap between the financial measurement of process improvement ideas and Lean Six Sigma measurements. It was required to increase employee engagement in process improvement initiatives.

Through both a practical and theoretical application of the Design for Lean Six Sigma methodology, the researcher was able to design a process and a benefit measuring methodology that was acceptable by finance and aligns with the benefits expected from the elimination of the Lean wastes.

The project found that benefit measurement methodology is not understood by most employees, which leads to a lack of engagement in working on improvements. The result of the study was a model for employees to identify and quantify these benefits. This has resulted in a model for cost-benefit analysis aligning financial costs with non-value add waste costs and cost of poor-quality costs resulting in increased process improvement ideas and activity.

While this study was limited to one company, applying this methodology could benefit any company experiencing the same difficulties.

This is one of the first studies to try and cost the benefits of LSS projects both from an organisational and generic viewpoint.

This paper will discuss one university’s efforts to initiate a process to better support PK-12 continuous school improvement goals for all 13 schools in their PDS network as a way to broaden the university’s mission and respond more formally to the individual school communities with which they partner.

The paper is conceptual in that it presents an innovative idea to stimulate discussion, generate new ideas and advance thinking about cross-institutional collaboration between universities and professional development schools.

The paper provides insights and ideas for bringing about change and growth in a seasoned PDS partnership network by connecting PK-12 continuous school improvement efforts to PDS partnership work.

This paper fulfills an identified need to study how seasoned partnerships can participate in simultaneous renewal by offering ideas that school–university partnership leaders can build upon as they make efforts to participate in the process of growth and change.

The purpose of this study is to investigate how professionals who are continuing their education rate a higher education quality management course with an emphasis on reflective learning and real problem-solving. The audited course consists of module-based teaching, while students work on an improvement project at their workplace between course sessions. This study has a twofold aim: to contribute to the design of quality improvement courses based on doing as we learn and to offer insight into the use of a final grading method that consist of a folder with reports from the intermediate work steps and a final report.

After completing the course, students received a survey with questions and statements about the course content, delivery and final grading methods. They answered these questions on a seven-point Likert scale and also answered open-ended questions.

It is clear that professional students value the interweaving of theory with real-life training, and they value module-based teaching in which theory is reviewed and applied to practical problems. Reflective learning was achieved through feedback from both teachers and fellow students on various interim reports. Students’ employers benefit from the course, as students gain experience with quality improvement. The grading of a final report on the improvement project based on three sub-assignments was highly appreciated.

Developers in courses in quality improvement benefit from learning how this course is structured, assessed and how participants perceived its components.

The course design with modules and intermediate work steps, where the students apply theory in quality improvement to a real project at their workplace, is an original concept. The modules correspond to the plan, do, check and act (PDCA) methodology.

This study aims to examine the impact of implementing target costing and continuous improvement techniques in industrial companies operating in southern Palestine on achieving sustainable competitive advantage (SCA). The study mainly assesses the level of application of these techniques by Palestinian industrial companies (PICs). Furthermore, it evaluates the extent to which the integration of these two methods can impact SCA, by producing cost-effective and innovative products that meet customer demands and needs, while simultaneously achieving continuous development of the company and an SCA.

A descriptive analytical approach was used to study the target costing and continuous improvement techniques employed by industrial companies in southern Palestine. A questionnaire was administered to 415 companies in the southern West Bank to collect data on the application of target cost and continuous improvement and their impact on SCA, measured through market share, differentiation and cost reduction. Control variables, such as company age, size (measured by the number of employees) and industrial sector classification were also included in the study model.

The findings of the study revealed that the PICs apply target costing and continuous improvement at a high level. Furthermore, all dimensions of achieving SCA were found to be achieved at a high level, with market share being the most prominent. The study also found that the integration of the target costing and continuous improvement had a positive impact on achieving SCA in the PICs. However, the study found no impact on company size, age or industrial sector on achieving a competitive advantage in terms of market share or other results.

The current study was limited to the application of strategic management methods to companies within the industrial sector only. This may constitute a limitation because it neglected other sectors. Likely, another limitation was the difficulty of obtaining the quantitative numbers needed for some quantitative variables that pertain to that type of industrial companies, which are mostly family companies that could not be regulated by the local companies' law to disclose their financial statement.

If industrial companies have ambitions to reduce production costs from the planning and design stage to set the target selling price. It is based on the understanding and awareness of customers' desires while maintaining the quality of products according to the best methods of improvement and innovation; therefore, this can be achieved by using the target costing and the continuous improvement techniques through reviewing the current study and its results.

The current study sought to link two methods, simultaneously and complementary, with each other of the strategic methods of managerial accounting, which helps the companies to offer their best to attract customers, develop the product or service and maintain their continuity in a changing labor market that enables it to achieve sustainable and competitive advantage.

This study is unique in that it explores the impact of the integration of target costing or continuous improvement techniques (Kaizen) on achieving SCA in Palestine industrial companies. While previous studies have examined either target costing or continuous improvement techniques separately, this study enhances the integration of these two methods to achieve SCA.

This study aims to investigate the efficiency changes of 23 major Asian container ports for the period from 2000 to 2007. In addition to assess the general trend, it also attempts to decompose the overall efficiency change into technological efficiency change, technical efficiency change and scale efficiency change to help port authorities to devise operational strategies.

The Malmquist index method is used, which is derived from data envelopment analysis. In this model, technological improvement comes from using state-of-the-art technologies, technical improvement is from rationalizing of port inputs and scale efficiency is from adjustment of port operational scales.

On average, the investigated ports have improved their efficiencies by 14.3 per cent. Such efficiency gains can be attributed to a 41 per cent increase in pure technical efficiency, a 47.5 per cent increase in scale efficiency and a 30.5 per cent decrease in technological efficiency. The scale efficiency contributes the most to the overall efficiency improvement, while technical and technological effects seem to have less impact. The fact that technological efficiency has little variance seems to suggest that this source of efficiency gain may not bring substantial competitive advantage.

The sample period is 2000-2007, so the impact from the Asian financial crisis or the economic downturn was not covered. Also, the port throughputs data do not separate shipment and transhipment.

This study provides valuable suggestions to improve efficiency for container ports along the “Maritime Silk Road.”

The purpose of this article is to increase the understanding of how improvements can be facilitated in a public service containing multiple actors in terms of identifying, aligning and prerequisites for the improvements.

The research utilizes an interactive research approach where data were gathered though a conference, workshop and a survey. The study alternately combines quality management methods such as affinity and interrelationship diagrams with computer aided text mining and latent semantic analysis.

The research shows that practitioners must consider interconnectedness between improvements and benefits that are crossing organizational levels of the public service system as well as professional borders. In public service systems, the complex reality can be better understood when improvements and benefits are classified into different organizational layers and an interconnectedness and sequence of improvement areas are acknowledged.

The research is set in the Swedish public service of the tax-paid sick leave insurance. Future research would benefit by investigating similar cases in other nations and other services.

The used methodology can be applied by practitioners to enhance a unified understanding of the system required to improve. The study also guides practitioners for how to support, relive hinders and prioritize improvements.

The research fills a gap of understanding of improvements in public services with multiple actors. As this area is difficult to improve, a novel combination of qualitative and quantitative methods paved the way for deeper and more unified understanding of the system.

When improving business processes, process analysts can use data-driven methods, such as process mining, to identify improvement opportunities. However, despite being supported by data, process analysts decide which changes to implement. Analysts often use process visualisations to assess and determine which changes to pursue. This paper helps explore how process mining visualisations can aid process analysts in their work to identify, prioritise and communicate business process improvement opportunities.

The study follows the design science methodology to create and evaluate an artefact for visualising identified improvement opportunities (IRVIN).

A set of principles to facilitate the visualisation of process mining outputs for analysts to work with improvement opportunities was suggested. Particularly, insights into identifying, prioritising and communicating process improvement opportunities from visual representation are outlined.

Prior work focuses on visualisation from the perspectives – among others – of process exploration, process comparison and performance analysis. This study, however, considers process mining visualisation that aids in analysing process improvement opportunities.

Entrepreneurship and the development of new business continue to be the forefront of socioeconomic development in virtually all economies today. Despite evidence of increasing research into entrepreneurial growth, the existing research is limited by the fact that most studies define entrepreneurial growth as a unidimensional construct and operationalize it as “realized” growth relying on financially based measures. Consequently, this article has two objectives: (1) to develop a set of accurate and comprehensive entrepreneurial growth measures; and (2) to test a series of hypotheses regarding precursors of growth intentions‐more specifically, to what extent, infrastructure factors affect entrepreneurial growth intentions. These two questions were examined using Entrepreneurial Profile Questionnaire (EPQ) in the context of Romania.

Results from factor analysis revealed refined patterns of entrepreneurial growth, including resource aggregation, market expansion, and technological improvement. The relationships between infrastructure and entrepreneurial growth were tested using a multiple regression model. Overall, it was posited that infrastructure is positively related to entrepreneurial growth. However, in most of the cases, the opposite proved to be true. These findings suggest that the Romanian entrepreneurs would pursue expansion plans in spite of the obstacles thrown into their path. Perhaps they have already developed strategies about overcoming those obstacles and in that process have developed the strength, ingenuity, and confidence to grow their new business ventures. Perhaps the many years that Romanians were confronted with numerous political and economical obstacles have prepared them to be much more flexible and adaptive.These counter-intuitive findings reflect on the hardiness and perseverance of the Romanian entrepreneurs.

Organisations within healthcare increasingly operate in rapidly changing environments and present wide variation in performance. It can be argued that this variation is influenced by the capability of an organisation to improve: its improvement capability. However, there is little theoretical research on improvement capability. The purpose of this paper is to set out the current diverse body of research on improvement capability and develop a theoretically informed conceptual framework.

This paper conceptualises improvement capability as a dynamic capability. This suggests that improvement capability is comprised of organisational routines that are bundled together, and adapt and react to organisational circumstances. Existing research conceptualises these bundles as three elements (microfoundations): sensing, seizing and reconfiguring. This conceptualisation is used to explore how improvement capability can be understood, by inductively categorising eight dimensions of improvement capability to develop a theoretically informed conceptual framework.

This paper shows that the three microfoundations which make up a dynamic capability are present in the identified improvement capability dimensions. This theoretically based conceptual framework provides a rich explanation of how improvement capability can be configured.

Identifying the component parts of improvement capability helps to explain why some organisations are less successful in improvement than others. This theoretically informed framework can support managers and policy makers to identify improvement capability dimensions in need of development. Further empirical research, particularly in non-market settings, such as publicly funded healthcare is required to enhance understanding of improvement capability and its configuration.