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Innovation is the key to competitive advantage, and attaining innovation often requires taking on higher-than-usual levels of risk. Yet, while managers commonly profess support for efforts in innovation, they often emphasize safe, short-term results over more risky, long-term outcomes. As a result, a major challenge to firms is increasing employees’ willingness to adopt risky yet more profitable alternatives.

This study uses an experiment to test how the level of performance standard, per se, affect employees’ propensity to take on (more) risky projects. Using participants from the U.S. and Taiwan to represent higher versus lower individualism national cultures, it also examines the effects of national culture on employee actions. The findings are consistent with expectations from combining goal and prospect theories that a specific high standard motivates greater risk taking than a low standard. We find only limited difference between the U.S. and Taiwanese samples’ individualism/collectivism scores, which may help to explain the lack of significant differences between their reactions to the performance standard treatment.

A Process Model During the last five years, American businesses have increasingly accepted the notion that product quality is necessary for them to compete in today′s world markets. Product quality, in the context here, can be defined by an agreed set of standards and tolerance limits between the firm and its customers. Quality is achieved through the successful creation of form, possession, time, place, and quantity utilities for the firm′s products. Control must be implemented in order to ensure that these utilities are created to meet the standards and tolerance limits agreed upon by the firm and its customers. The purpose of exercising control is to ensure that desired results are attained from an activity or process. As such, it is important to exercise control over the logistics activities to make sure that time, place, and quantity utilities are created in accordance with customer needs. The purpose of this monograph is to present a rather comprehensive discussion of the concept of control. Specific control concepts presented include a discussion of the link between control and quality, the development of the characteristics of control and levels of sophistication of control, the presentation of an eclectic process control model, and suggestions to managers on how to implement the control process over logistics activities.

Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

Healthcare service quality in the USA has gained importance under value-based payment models. Providing feedback to front-line staff is a vital component of managing service performance, but complex organizational dynamics can prevent effective communication. This work explored the performance management of appointment desk staff at Mayo Clinic Arizona, identified barriers to effective management and sought to standardize the process for monitoring service performance.

Multiple data sources, including qualitative inquiry with 31 employees from the primary care and surgery departments, were used. The research was conducted in two phases – facilitated roundtable discussions with supervisors and semi-structured interviews with supervisors and staff six months after implementation of service standards. Participants were probed for attitudes about the service standards and supervisor feedback after implementation.

While all staff indicated a positive work environment, there was an unexpected and pervasive negative stigma surrounding individual feedback from one’s supervisor. Half the participants indicated there had been no individual feedback regarding the service standards from the supervisor. Presenting service standards in a simple, one-page format, signed by both supervisor and the patient service representative (PSR), was well received.

Combining rapid-cycle quality improvement methodology with qualitative inquiry allowed efficient development of role-specific service standards and quick evaluation of their implementation. This unique approach for improving healthcare service quality and identifying barriers to providing individual feedback may be useful to organizations navigating a more value- and consumer-driven healthcare market.

Many educational systems are currently establishing standards frameworks for school principals’ work. This paper critiques three current examples and describes an alternative approach. The authors argue that by combining qualitative case studies with probabilistic measurement techniques, the alternative approach provides contextually rich descriptions of the growth in performance on a series of dimensions.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the drivers of the depth of halal standard implementation in the halal-certified food manufacturing small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The second aim of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of halal standard practices on the SME’s performance.

Of the 143 halal-certified SMEs in Solo Raya, Province of Central Java, Indonesia, 83 were willing to take part in the present research. The survey was carried out by an on-site visit to the targeted respondents. A structured questionnaire was used to gather primary data. Partial least square structural equation model was then used to analyze the collected data.

The results proved that internal motivation and organization commitment positively affect halal standard implementation, while external pressures do not. The external pressures influence the depth of halal standard implementation through internal motivation as a mediating variable. Furthermore, the depth of halal standard implementation leads to the improvement of operational performance. The improvement of operational performance can further encourage the increase of market performance and financial performance.

The first limitation of this research is about the samples in which they are small-sized and restricted to food manufacturing SMEs. Another limitation is the subjectivity of SME’s managers when evaluating performance, which may provide imprecise measures of performance.

The findings suggest the notion that success of halal standard implementation depends on the capabilities of SMEs to convert the external pressures into internal motivation. Moreover, food-manufacturing SMEs should consider halal standard as an innovative tool to be applied in their daily operation and production as the halal standard has a significant role in influencing SME’s performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is the first attempt in integrating drivers, halal standard implementation and performance in the specific context of food manufacturing SMEs in Indonesia.

The term “competency” has not been clearly defined in the literature. Two main meanings of the term have been identified, one referring to the outputs, or results of training – that is, competent performance. The other definition referring to the inputs, or underlying attributes, required of a person to achieve competent performance. Each definition has been used to describe both individual and organisational competencies. A typology of the meanings of competency has been developed to show that the term has several meanings depending on the purpose for which it is used. The implications developed in this paper are directed toward reducing the confusion over the meaning of the term competency.

The purpose of this paper is to report innovative research aimed at ascertaining whether standards for school leaders could be applied to the process of selecting senior secondary school principals for appointment. Specifically, psychometrically robust measures of performance are sought that would sufficiently differentiate performance to support judgement about whether or not to appoint candidates in the public educational authority in Western Australia.

Initially, the authors describe previous research in the application of standards to selection in education, followed by a brief review of selection practices undertaken in two international settings and the Western Australian educational setting. The authors then describe the innovative design of performance‐based assessment tasks for the selection process including task and rubric development, rater training and data validation. The Rasch measurement model is used to analyse the datasets gathered during three iterations of selection process for the Western Australian education authority.

The Rasch analysis of each dataset provides evidence of construct validity and a robust measure of reliability. The person and item location distributions indicate the tasks were better targeted for the highest performing candidates in the second and third iterations and that fine‐grained discrimination was evident across the candidate locations.

The paper describes psychometrically robust measures of performance that would sufficiently differentiate performance to support judgement about whether or not to appoint candidates in the public educational authority in Western Australia. Specifically, the paper describes the development of performance‐based tasks over three years and demonstrates the application of Rasch analysis to examine the psychometric properties of the assessment tasks.