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The success ofIn recent years, there has been significant interest in the application of continuous quality improvement (CQI) and total quality management (TQM), and patient‐focused care (PFC) in health care organisations around the globe. The hospital industry has substantially embraced the concepts of CQI and TQM with the belief that these concepts and programmes will lead to an improvement in both the quality and efficiency with which health services are delivered. The objective of this article is to achieve better outcomes in health care services with fewer resources by studying the implementation of patient‐focused care in the health care provision context and particularly in the area of pharmaceutical care management as an integrated process in the delivery of health care in a hospital setting. The changes in health care provision have in many instances meant that the provision of pharmaceutical services needed re‐assessing.

Extends a discussion concerning competition. A model is introduced, based on the concept of the extended product, in order to help TQM practitioners manage the competitiveness of their products. Further, a discussion is initiated which addresses a number of issues relating to competition.

The purpose of this paper is to identify a comprehensive set of potential determinants influencing the successful implementation of balanced scorecard (BSC).

This research is an exploratory investigation into the BSC implementation based on a holistic view. This includes: a comprehensive scrutiny of the relevant literature; a comprehensive analysis of case studies of BSC implementations in organisations presented in the literature; and an exploratory global survey of 103 organisations in 25 countries that have already implemented or are in the process of implementing BSC.

The roadmap presented in this paper has been taken from a model proposed in the study. The model contained 27 critical success factors which are expected to influence the BSC implementation. The model divides those factors into three levels, namely dominant, main, and supporting factors.

There is a need to empirically test and refine the proposed factors, and explore relationships among the various variables by collecting data from organisations that have already implemented BSC.

The findings of this study are important and relevant to all the different sized organisations in the different sectors and industries. This study also makes a significant contribution to society in general.

Generally, the generic factors proposed by this study should enhance the current practices of BSC implementation, which mostly follow narrowly‐focused approaches. In essence, the results of this research will help management in making crucial decisions and in resource allocations that are required to make the BSC implementation a success.

Examines the vendor evaluation and selection models developed by many researchers during the past ten years. Some of these models are very simple and intuitive but some of them are more sophisticated and mathematically oriented. These models show supplier selection decision making processes based on a set of supplier performance criteria. Examines these models to find out if there is a need for a more representative model and develops a simple model for supplier evaluation and selection in an advanced manufacturing technologies’ environment. The model offers decision makers a variety of scenarios on which they can select the best criterion or set of criteria for vendor evaluation and selection. Additionally, presents a numerical example to illustrate the model and to prove its practical utility.

This paper aims to identify important challenges to sustaining business excellence amongst award‐winning companies in Australia.

Companies which had won Australian Business Excellence Awards were chosen as cases for this research since they had used the excellence framework over many years and, having achieved significant results, now potentially faced issues in sustaining a high level of performance. Interviews with key managers, published materials and information provided during industry visits were used as the primary information sources in the study.

Findings suggest that the primary challenges include; leadership support, drive and consistency throughout the organisation and communicating strategy and making it meaningful for people at all organisational levels. These were addressed in a variety of ways in the companies.

Companies which are successful at business excellence experience challenges which require ongoing management.

This research offers insights into the difficulties faced by successful organisations in their quest to build and maintain excellence and how they manage these.

This paper shows in theory how a knowledge management system can be built as a human resource management (HRM) function. The solution builds on the notion of innovation benchmarking. A case study from the company ST Ericsson illustrates the discrepancy between what the company needs to do and what the HRM function is able to support when it comes to innovation. The study shows the ability of employees in the company to innovate within key success factors. More worryingly, it also shows key areas where the company is not able to compete and where it is not getting any support from the HRM function. At the end, we identify a number of directions for future research in the field of innovation benchmarking as it relates to HRM policies.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the main organizational factors that contribute to the successful implementation of business process reengineering (BPR) in the Egyptian banking sector. These factors include management commitment, information technology (IT) infrastructure, people management, change readiness, centralization and formalization.

The key organizational enablers were identified through an extensive literature review. Then, statistical analysis was carried out based on data collected, using a questionnaire instrument, from 184 managers employed in 38 banks operating in Egypt.

The results of the study indicate that management commitment, IT infrastructure, people management, change readiness and organizational structure with a low degree of formalization are critical enablers for implementing a successful BPR program within the Egyptian banking sector.

The results may support managers of banks in identifying and assessing the influence of integrating organizational factors that facilitate or hinder the successful implementation of BPR.

Since 2004, the Egyptian banking system has involved in major reform programs and many BPR efforts. Much research effort is required to investigate the BPR projects within the Egyptian banks in order to develop a concrete base of knowledge and understanding of the nature of BPR and factors that support its successful implementation. Moreover, there is an insufficiency of empirical studies regarding the implementation of BPR within the Egyptian service sector. The current study fills this gap by exploring and examining the main organizational factors affecting BPR implementation in a developing country.

The purpose of this paper is to establish practical guidelines for benchmarking eight total quality management (TQM) practices vital to pharmaceutical companies’ performance. The paper also proposes the use of an analytic total quality index (TQI) as a benchmarking tool and illustrates the importance and effectiveness of this benchmarking methodology by applying it in two comparative studies of three Jordanian pharmaceutical companies.

In order to achieve the above-mentioned purpose, the data were gathered through a questionnaire that was used to evaluate the gap between the ideal and current status of the quality management system and distributed to the quality units from three companies: pharmaceutical manufacturing company, a pharmaceutical manufacturing company working in the same field and a pharmaceutical service providing research services to a pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. And the mean differences between the current and ideal states for the eight critical TQM practices were compared for these two comparative studies using the t-test.

Each of the two comparisons reveals statistically significant differences regarding the perceptions of actual and ideal scores for manufacturing and service companies on five out of eight critical factors and, on two out of eight critical factors for manufacturing and manufacturing companies.

The pharmaceutical companies, regardless of whether they are manufacturing or service company, can adopt benchmarking techniques which were applied in this case study to improve their performance and their product/service quality.

The consequences of this research can support organization managers and policy makers in effectively benchmarking the identified TQM practices in their organizations using the proposed TQI benchmarking tool.

Police agencies are under pressure to improve their performance and provide outstanding services for the community. In response, academics and practitioners have called to adopt effective methods that help these agencies to achieve their goals. Studies reported that benchmarking has a role to improve organisational performance. However, poor evidence of using benchmarking within police agencies and very few studies examine the relationship between it and police performance. Motivated by this gap, this study aims to explore and examine this relationship under the mediating role of innovation culture.

A quantitative methodology was utilised in this study. Data used to examine the hypotheses were obtained from the departments and stations of the Dubai Police Force (DPF), and the population comprised head section officers. A total of 338 questionnaires were distributed to respondents, 252 of which were returned. The hypothesised relationships were tested with the data collected by SPSS and SmartPLS statistical software.

Findings clearly show that benchmarking is directly and indirectly associated with the organisational performance of the DPF through innovation culture. Results support the notion that innovation culture facilitates the implementation of proper benchmarking projects in the DPF, which positively affects different aspects of its performance.

This study includes several limitations. Specifically, the generalisability of the findings should be considered. The analysis applies only to the DPF in the UAE. Thus, investigating and analysing variables in different police agencies in the UAE or internationally would be valuable.

Several recommendations are provided in relation to the obtained results to assist managers and decision makers in the DPF and other police agencies. This study includes suggestions for improving police performance by establishing an innovation culture and adopting benchmarking practices.

Although several contributions indicated that benchmarking and innovation culture is a key determinant of success, the literature lacks empirical studies investigating this link in the police field. This study is the only one to date that examined this relationship in police services. Accordingly, this study seeks to bridge this gap and delivers empirical evidence and theoretical insight to better understand this relationship.