Search results

This research aimed to verify how the performance measurement system (PMS) and the quality management system (QMS) work in small and medium Brazilian enterprises in the light of the typology proposed by Garengo (2009).

Using a qualitative approach PMS’s and QMS’s managers were interviewed. The data from the first interview were analyzed using the technique of content analysis and have been subsequently triangulated with other data collected. The study was conducted by means of two questionnaires, two semi-structured interviews, and the analysis of the performance measures used by five small/medium manufactures based in the State of São Paulo.

It was found that in four out of five companies, PMS does not function singly, but along with QMS, mainly with respect to performance indicators. In spite of that intrinsic operation, the systems are in different stages of evolution. It was also found that in three out of five companies, quality management area is responsible for coordinating the process of PMS use, without effective participation from the controlling and/or accounting areas in this process.

The typology of Garengo (2009), used to check the stage of the PMS, was validated and can be used by practitioners to diagnose and improve the PMS in their enterprises; companies with QMS certified by ISO, particularly with higher degree of quality management maturity, can be encouraged to implement or improve the PMS in their organizations.

We present a description and analysis of the current reforms in the French system of “assurance maladie”, or its health insurance system, particularly as they bear on quality at the hospital level. The measurement and management of quality play a significant role in the reform, thus providing a particularly timely example for health care policy makers, researchers, and managers. We discovered several lessons from the French experience. First, the issue of workload influenced thinking about how best to build a given indicator, and led to careful evaluation of the added value of additional data collection. In some cases the indicators are actually more of a screen or filter than an actual assessment of quality, with particularly high or low values signaling the need for further investigation rather than serving as assessments per se. Second, the development and implementation of quality indicators (QIs) demand the involvement of professionals in the process. Third, process indicators seemed to be more useful than outcome indicators. Fourth, expectations for quality management should be aligned with feasibility and with the reality of measurement system. For example, the workload is closely tied to the state of the hospital data collection systems (indicators selection). Lastly, the twin objectives of quality improvement and accountability do not necessarily mesh easily or well.

This study sets out to shed light on those infrastructures underlying the ubiquitous, yet contested nature of governing by numbers. Investigating the 30-year long emergence of Germany’s “external quality assurance system” for hospitals, the authors show how methods for quantifying quality align with broader institutional and ideational shifts to form a calculative infrastructure for governance. Our study focuses on three phases of infrastructural development wherein methods for calculating quality, institutions for coordinating data and reform ideals converge with one another. The authors argue that the succession of these phases represents a gradual layering process, whereby old ways of enacting quality governance are not replaced, but augmented by new sets of calculative practices, institutions and ideas. Thinking about infrastructures as multi-layered complexes allows us to explore how they construct possibilities for control, remain stable over time and transform the fields in which they are embedded. Rather than governance being enacted according to a singular goal or value, we see an infrastructure that is flexible enough to support multiple modalities of control, including selective intervention, quality-based competition and automatized budgeting. Infrastructural change, instead of revolving around crises in measurement, is shaped by incubation periods – times of relative calm when political actors, medical practitioners, mathematicians, and many others explore and reflect past experiences, rather than follow erratic reforms fads. Finally, analysing infrastructures as multi-layered constructs underlines how they produce multiple images of care quality, which not only shift existing power relations, but also change the ways we understand and make sense of public services.

Functional assessment-based interventions are a tertiary support that have been incorporated in many three-tiered models of prevention to support students who do not respond to more global prevention efforts. Although endorsed by host of reputable organizations (e.g., National Association of School Psychologists) and mandated in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 1997, 2004), concerns have been raised that this mandate may not be warranted if functional assessment-based interventions do not meet minimum criteria to establish this as an evidence-based practice. One issue contributing to this concern is variability in the functional assessment process. John Umbreit and colleagues (2007) have attempted to address this concern by introducing a systematic approach that includes (a) a Function Matrix to analyze functional assessment data and identify the hypothesized function(s) of the target behavior and (b) a Function-Based Intervention Decision Model to guide intervention planning. In this chapter, we applied the core quality indicators for single-case research developed by Horner, Carr, Halle, McGee, Odom, and Wolery (2005) to studies conducted using this practice to determine the extent to which this systematic approach to functional assessment-based interventions met the standards for evidence-based practices for use in educational settings across the K-12 continuum for students with or at-risk for high incidence disabilities. If this practice is deemed to meet criteria, then this systematic approach may be particularly useful in meeting the mandate established in IDEA. Results suggest that it may be appropriate to establish this systematic method as a promising practice.

This article begins with a brief reading of the state of the practice of empirical social science research on measurement before proceeding to the discussion of an exemplary instance of this researcher's ethnographic effort to improve indicators of social capital formation. Given the central role measurement plays in social science research, it is appropriate, that a volume on methodological innovations in ethnography would contain a chapter about the relationship of ethnography to measure development. However, it is worth acknowledging that the line of argumentation advanced in this chapter is unconventional. The central tenant of this chapter – that ethnography has much to offer to the field of measurement and that ethnographers ought to take the contribution that they have the potential to make to the field of measurement seriously – at present might be thought to have little agreement either among those researchers whose primary focus is measurement or among ethnographers. This chapter contends that the features and strengths of ethnography specifically, and qualitative research more generally, makes it uniquely suited to contribute to the development of new indicators and the improvement of existing indicators. This chapter modestly hopes to encourage discussion of this contention and illustrate how this author sees his own ethnographic research into indicators of social capital formation as an attempt to address a pressing methodological dilemma within the field, more general of social scientific measure development.

Why evaluate quality in Library and Information Science (LIS) schools? From a historical perspective, quality assurance always has been considered a strategic issue by LIS schools for improvement of the teaching and learning experience and for accountability. Internationalization has added a new role to quality assurance in LIS. In terms of the context of the World Trade Organization General Agreement on Trade in Services (WTO-GATS), LIS is increasingly recognized as part of the knowledge sector. The WTO-GATS has approved a multilateral framework that sets out rules for the conduct of international trade in services, including educational services. The GATS includes both general rules—for example, those related to the transparency of trade-related regulations—and a framework for specific commitments under which countries choose whether, and under what conditions, to allow access to their markets for foreign suppliers. The provisions in the GATS related to trade regulations and ways countries choose to allow access to their markets are relevant to the recognition of international standards or qualifications for professionals. Although not mandatory, international standards are encouraged, both for quality assurance of LIS school offerings in general, and for recognition of a specific LIS school outside its home country. Additionally, in the context of an increasingly internationalized job market, employers need reliable information on how to evaluate specific higher education degrees and assess degrees recognized and granted in their domestic market. The goals are to facilitate the mobility of students and to increase employability. The need to reinforce the comparability of higher education internationally through quality assurance systems is now becoming more pressing.