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Reports the results of a case study which undertook to examine the relationship between conformance and quality‐related costs. The controversial Lundvall‐Juran economic quality level (EQL) model has been criticized by various authors due to its acceptance of imperfect quality. While persuasive, this emotional aversion to imperfection does not provide a convincing critique of the EQL model. However, the EQL remains widely used in practice. Argues that several assumptions of the EQL model should be questioned including monotonicity, continuity, the positive relationship between prevention/appraisal costs and conformance, the negative relationship between failure costs and conformance, and the combining of costs. Further, the EQL model illustrates a single contingent relationship between quality costs and conformance. Provides several alternative cases of the relationship between quality costs and conformance. The results are then reported and the underlying relationships of the EQL model tested. The results showed that prevention and appraisal costs were positively and significantly associated with conformance. Failure costs were also positively and significantly related to conformance. These results provided support for a contingency view of quality‐related costs.

The purpose of this research is to examine how service enablers such as resource management and human resource management practices, identified in prior research as vital, influence both conformance quality and productivity performance. The paper also aims to study how the level of customer contact, a major service differentiator, could moderate the influence of such practices on performance.

Using sample data from 249 service firms in China, hierarchical a regression analyses is employed to test the research questions.

The results indicate that there are common resource management and human resource management practices that positively affect both conformance quality and productivity. Importantly, besides its direct and positive effect on conformance quality and on productivity performance, the level of customer contact was found to have a contingency effect on the relationships between resource management or human resource management practices, and conformance quality or productivity performance.

Future research should consider including other developing countries, more service industries, and a longitudinal study if possible.

Implications of the findings on theory in services and managerial practice in the context of China are offered.

The theoretical value of the research lies in identifying the factors that simultaneously affect both conformance quality and productivity (which are often seen as competing goals) in service sectors, and their dependency on the level of customer contact.

The traditional view of quality treats it as an economic good which can be developed by incurring costs. Proponents of total quality management have rejected the traditional view and stress the complementary nature of cost and quality. Reconciles these two views as different manifestations of the same underlying phenomenon within the same strategic framework. This requires precise definitions of quality concepts such as conformance and performance quality. The organization first examines its current position within this framework. The definitions of quality help sharpen the formulation of strategic objectives and the framework helps in mapping out a policy for moving the firm from the current position to the desired position. In addition, also determines the operating systems of quality management by how quality is defined in the organization. In conjunction with the strategic direction, the operational management procedures facilitate the process of cost management.

This paper seeks to illuminate how the emphasis on quality dimensions differs in service firms dependent on the size of their back‐room activity. It examines how that emphasis differs with Quality Certification (QCert). The research examines the relative importance attached by the chief executives of 93 large service organisations to both internal and external dimensions of quality. It analyses the relationship of these quality dimensions to the importance placed on the possession of QCert. The effect of process structure is explored by categorising service firms as being in front‐room versus back‐room dominant industrial sectors. The research findings provide empirical evidence that service firms who rate the possession of QCert as important, place much more emphasis on quality, and have a balanced perspective where internal and external quality are both emphasised. In contrast, service firms that do not promote QCert, emphasise quality less. In the absence of QCert, we find clear differentiation in how quality is conceptualised in front‐room versus back‐room dominant industrial sectors.

This paper contributes to, and links the areas of quality management and buyer‐supplier relationships. In doing so, we seek to address two broad research questions. To what extent do quality practices impact upon the various dimensions of quality performance, manufacturing performance and, in turn, business performance? To what extent is the relationship between quality practices and quality performance contingent upon the nature of buyer‐supplier relationships? To address these questions, we developed a path model incorporating quality practices, design quality, conformance quality, external quality‐in‐use, product cost, time‐to‐market, customer satisfaction, business performance and buyer‐seller relationships. The model was tested with data collected from 200 suppliers in the electronics sector in the Republic of Ireland. Data analysis of the data indicated considerable support for the conceptual model.

The article examines the usage and relative importance of quality measurements in the UK’s largest service companies. The authors analyse the relationship of both internal and customer‐based quality measurements to the importance placed on accreditation to an ISO 9000 standard. The effect of process structure is explored by categorising the service firms as being in front‐room or back‐room dominant service sectors. The authors find that the service firms, which consider accreditation to be important, have a different emphasis on quality than other service firms do. Significantly, their emphasis shifts from one that is in line with their process structure to a more balanced one, where both internal and customer‐based quality measurements receive similar attention. This leads them to conclude that accreditation to an ISO 9000 standard can make a profound difference to the way quality is perceived and measured in large service firms.

To investigate the relationship between two structural dimensions (formalization and decentralization) and two quality dimensions (design and conformance).

A total sample of 758 staff members and patients in five hospitals completed a questionnaire composed of four scales designed to measure the main variables in our study. Correlation and regression analysis were used to measure and confirm the study's hypotheses.

It was found that higher levels of decentralization are related to higher levels of design quality while higher levels of formalization are related to higher levels of conformance quality.

The results suggest that hospital managers need to skillfully handle the structural conflict between decentralization and formalization, and use both dimensions simultaneously to improve hospital performance and patients' service quality.

Previous studies are advanced by clarifying the impact of structural variables on total quality. A positive relationship between decentralization and design quality; and between formalization and conformance quality is empirically confirmed. The study points out the necessity of simultaneously achieving high levels of both formalization and decentralization in order to improve hospital performance in general and both components of total quality in particular.

Existing quality‐cost models have been criticized for their imprecision and inadequate theoretical justification. Attempts to remedy these deficiencies by using systems dynamics to build a generic model relating quality conformance levels to the quality‐cost categories of prevention, appraisal and failure (PAF). Outlines in depth the assumptions underlying the model’s structure and links model parameters to published empirical data. Explores the model’s sensitivities to changes in factors including different initial values of conformance quality. Determines the potential for improvements in quarterly and cumulative quality costs by changing the PAF cost levels.

Doubts have been raised over the adequacy of supply of appropriately skilled graduates from UK higher education (HE) institutes to employers. Changing educational provision to met these employers’ requiremetns may be one of the foremost future challenges to the higher education sector. It has been suggested that to address this challenge a total quality management (TQM) framework, coupled with appropriate curricular modifications, could be used to promote change in HE courses. Introduces and pilots a tool that could be used to promote awareness and understanding of the process‐oriented aspects of TQM. Suggest that this technique could represent a mechanism to promote awareness and change in quality issues involved in educational provision in HE institutes.

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.