Search results

The purpose of this paper is to present the framework of a fourth paradigm since the existing three paradigms in quality management are not sufficient anymore to understand what happened in the past and surely fail to understand what is happening at the moment and needed in future.

A literature review has been undertaken on different visions on quality management that are used. The underlying principles have led to three quality paradigms. Literature on quadrant models is studied to place the three existing paradigms and identify the possible characteristics of the fourth.

One can discern four quality paradigms in quality management: the Empirical Paradigm, the Reference Paradigm, the Reflective Paradigm and the Emergence Paradigm. The use of these paradigms differs according to the context. Together they form a concept of Total Quality Management. At the moment the Emergence Paradigm has not had enough attention although it might be the best equipped to find new ways of working for the organisations in the current context.

In the literature review the authors selected seven journals in the Business Source Premier database: Total Quality Management (Total Quality Management & Business Excellence); the Academy of Management Review; Product and Operations Management; Organisational Dynamics; the Harvard Business Review; the Sloan Management Review and Organisational Behavior and Performance. In the advanced search mode the authors entered two subjects: “quality management” and “paradigm”. The selected results (in total 289 articles) were examined for its fitness for answering the questions above. That resulted in a selection of 26 articles that are being used in the literature review.

The Emergence Paradigm can be further investigated on its use for quality management in organisations in times of emergent change. Some first insights have been presented here.

The Emergence Paradigm can have impact beyond the field of quality management.

The paper provides new insights in the essence of quality management in times of change and clarity on the usability of the thoughts and tools of four different paradigms in the twenty-first century.

The purpose of this paper is to support the ongoing dialogue and shed light on the different views on integrated care. An overarching definition of integrated care is proposed combining the ways of thinking of the four quality paradigms the authors identify. The idea of epistemic fluency offers a way-out of ongoing discussions about “what integration is”.

Four paradigms of quality are presented and applied to healthcare. Epistemic fluency is proposed as the capacity to understand, switch between and combine different kinds of knowledge. The authors compare previously developed definitions of integrated care to the various combinations of paradigms.

All four paradigms of care quality are present in healthcare and in the most used definitions of integrated care. The Reflective Paradigm and the Emergence Paradigm receive least attention. Some definitions combine more than one paradigm. An overarching definition of integrated care is proposed.

In this paper, only the most prominent definitions of integration have been considered.

Integration research and practice requires a widely accepted definition of integrated care, embracing all four paradigms of care quality. Our suggestion provides a common foundation that may prevent misunderstanding.

The use of quality management paradigms to frame the debate on defining integrated care is new and leads to new insights for teaching, research and practice.

This study aims to analyze four text-mining studies of quality management (QM) to illustrate and problematize how the research on quality has informed the quality paradigm since the 1980s. By understanding history, one can better manage current developments.

The findings are based on a meta-analysis of four text-mining studies that explore and describe 11,579 research entries on quality between 1980 and 2017.

The findings show that the research on quality during the past 30 years form a research paradigm consisting of three operational paradigms: an operative paradigm of backend quality orbiting around QM, total QM (TQM) and service quality; an operative paradigm of middle-way quality, circling around the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), business excellence frameworks (BEFs) and quality awards; and an operative paradigm of frontend quality, revolving around reliability, costs and processes. The operative paradigms are interconnected and complementary; they also show a divide between a general management view of quality and a hands-on engineering view of quality. The findings indicate that the research on quality is a long-lived standalone paradigm, supporting the notion of quality being a genuine academic entity, not a fashion or fad.

The empirical basis of the study is four text-mining studies. Consequently, the results and findings are based on a limited number of findings.

Text-mining studies targeting research on quality are scarce, and there seem to be no prior models that depict the quality paradigm based on such studies. The perspectives presented here will advance the existing paradigmatic discourse. The new viewpoints aim to facilitate and deepen the discussion on current and future directions of the paradigm.

The purpose of this research is to explore the deployment of the total quality management (TQM) paradigm in the TQM Journal in relation to the context of the 21st century. The study builds on the theoretical framework of the four quality paradigms that together compose TQM. The four paradigms differ in their effectiveness based on the context in which they are used. In a complex context, one would expect the reflective and the emergence paradigm to flourish. The TQM Journal is one of the leading scientific journals on TQM. If the assumption that the reflective and emergent paradigm would flourish in a complex environment is correct, one will see that represented in the past five years of scientific research in that magazine.

The TQM Journal articles of the past five years from January 2016 till January 2021 have been chosen as the scope of an exploratory review. The author assessed the title and abstract of all articles based on the characteristics of the four quality paradigms, as described in the theoretical framework. If the title and abstract did not provide enough data to take the decision for the assessment, the whole article has been taken into account. The results have been collated, summarized and reported. Based on the results, the author explores the possible patterns.

In total, 283 articles from 2016 to 2021 (from Volume 28, Issue 1 to Volume 33, Issue 1) were included in this study. In total, 45 were read fully to be able to characterize the article. Most of the studies relate the tertiary (33.3%) and secondary (27.9%) sectors. Healthcare was the sector in 32 of the cases (11.3%). Most studies have been conducted in Europe (n = 82, 28.9%) and Asia (n = 58, 20.5%). Within Europe, Italy was the most prolific country with, respectively, 25 (30.8%) of the articles. The USA and Canada only had five articles in these five years (1.8%). Many articles did not specify the region. More than half of the articles (52.4%) worked with surveys, questionnaires or other methods to involve the customer in the research; 16 articles (5.6%) used experts in the field through expert panels and such to collect data from. In total, 107 articles (37.8%) did involve no other stakeholders than the researchers themselves. Eight studies (2.8%) used action research or co-design methodology to create optimal stakeholder participation. Based on the data, four patterns can be discovered: the context sensitivity of the articles, reflexivity, coping with uncertainty and co-creation.

It is acknowledged that the articles in the study were published in just one scientific journal. One can expect that this will be represented in other journals on TQM. Still, it would be interesting to conduct a follow-up study in other journals on TQM and compare the results. The research is done by one subjective researcher.

Research on TQM should take the complexity of the context into account. For that purpose, researchers should focus more on the emergence paradigm within TQM.

This study is the first to investigate TQM as a holistic paradigm, including the empirical, reflective, reference and emergence paradigm in TQM research.

Quality management is dominated by rational paradigms for the measurement and management of quality, but these paradigms start to “break down”, when faced with the inherent complexity of managing quality in intensely competitive changing environments. In this article, the various theoretical strategy paradigms employed to manage quality are reviewed and the advantages and limitations of these paradigms are highlighted. A major implication of this review is that when faced with complexity, an ideological stance to any single strategy paradigm for the management of quality is ineffective. A case study is used to demonstrate the need for an integrative multi‐paradigm approach to the management of quality as complexity increases.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an idea on the next step in quality management, based on the experiences of the last 100 years.

A literature review has been undertaken on the history of quality management so far and on trends for the near future. Based on these findings a model has been designed to describe different elements of quality management. A focus is on the human aspects, like vision on the employee, roles of the quality manager and the skills required.

After the control, continuous improvement and commitment paradigm the time has come for a new paradigm based on the importance of the context.

The paper provides more insight into the near future of quality management in times of emergent change.

Draws on contrasting epistemological stances with regard to quality enhancement in the context of higher education and develops the work of Schon (1987), Fish (1992) and Bond (1996, 1998) concerning the technical‐rational view of professionalism and the more generous notion of professional‐artistry. Identifies how these ideas can be useful in the analysis and design of processes for organisational self‐assessment and is based on participatory action research being conducted in a UK university preparing for a major Government quality review in the year 2000. Two cases are presented, each based on the key assumptions and foundations which underpin one of the two contrasting paradigms. Concludes by exploring the key issues of conjunction and disjunction between the two paradigms of organisational self‐assessment, and proposes a framework within which the two approaches can co‐exist.

The continuous development of quality management in organizations was driven on the one hand by competition and on the other hand by growing requirements of the customers. Mass production with a pure push strategy changed to a more and more pull strategy with higher customer and market orientation. To satisfy the requirements of the triangle quality, cost and time the field of view of quality management has continuously been widened from considering “what” is done to “how” it is done. Nowadays the complexity and interrelations inside and outside of organizations increased with their global orientation. To face these global challenges, the purpose of this paper is to do a detailed analysis of the history of quality management that can support the initial position in development of specific tools and methods for quality improvement in organizations.

For the historic analysis a well-founded literature review has been performed. After presenting the historical development of quality management, the current situation described. Finally an outlook for upcoming trends in quality management is provided by extrapolating current developments.

Four different paradigm shifts in quality management are up to now identified and described, accompanied by a high number of smaller development steps. Current efforts for the further development of quality management encompass “perceived quality”, “human-focused quality management” and “intelligent quality management”.

The paper gives a survey on the development of quality management and delivers a forecast on future requirements and trends in structuring the quality management in technical enterprises.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study based around a commercial facilities management (FM) service provider's creation of an internal benchmark of how services for an acute hospital perform in terms of service quality.

The paper presents findings of a hard and soft FM application of the widely‐recognised SERVQUAL performance assessment tool; including its use and usefulness in a healthcare FM context. The paper proceeds to a conceptual discussion on emergent issues. It offers a questioning framework which the authors identify requires further study and debate but raises potentially profound issues for FM. Further replication‐related and conceptual development research is underway.

Principally, the paper discusses the emergence and significance of the psychological phenomenon of cognitive dissonance within the datasets for the private finance initiative hospital case study. The paper also briefly discusses the scope for using the service consumers' zone of tolerance as a management datum.

The paper concludes with a discussion on the implications of cognitive dissonance, which we believe poses radical and hitherto‐unaddressed questions about the appropriateness of some core aspects of POE, satisfaction measurement used in FM contract management, and the wider FM performance management paradigm. This appears to open a whole new perspective for soft FM and FM service integrators.

The paper challenges the conventions and major assumptions of the FM service quality assessment paradigm. It suggests cross disciplinary implications for the FM research field, and is relevant to suppliers, clients, facilities managers, service consumers, and customers, including procurement manager. Overall, the paper raises a lot of questions about the FM service quality management paradigm(s) and assumption(s).

The field of quality has undergone significant changes as reflected by changes in its definition, paradigms, approaches, techniques, and scope of application. This paper reviews emerging trends and issues focusing on quality engineering. Changes in customer expectation have driven the changes in the technology of design and manufacturing, which is becoming more important in satisfying individual customer expectations. This also calls for special attention to the engineering aspects of quality. Brief reviews on recent advances in the prominent quality tools such as statistical process control, quality function deployment, and design of experiment are reported. General trends in quality engineering research show the tools are being enhanced, integrated, computerized and broaden their application bases, where possible opportunities for further investigation are indicated. Among others these include contributions in multiple‐response optimization, intelligent quality systems, multivariate SPC, and practical and simple guidelines for actual implementation of various tools.