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Describes a quality team programme established within an NHS Hospital in the West Midlands in 1989, and presents the findings of a questionnaire survey of 28 quality team leaders. Discusses some of the programme′s implementation and operational characteristics; and it emerges that there are very few differences between them vis‐À‐vis a quality circle programme. Suspension of individual quality teams is due to (1) the lack of time to meet; (2) a lack of funding; (3) a lack of management support; or (4) lack of training.

Reports the main findings of a study carried out into the quality improvement structure of six different companies. Among the findings is that an infrastructure in terms of TQM Steering Committee and improvements facilitators is necessary at the introduction and during the development stages of an improvement process, but this infrastructure will change as a company’s quality improvement activities mature. In setting up this structure, care must be taken that it does not duplicate the existing management structure. The improvement structure becomes less important when people in all functions take responsibility for their own personal improvement but it takes some time for this to happen. Also points out that the improvement infrastructure needs to be reviewed on a regular basis and assessed to evaluate its effectiveness.

For many, quality circles have been a struggle, total quality management has been something to “get around to one day” and continuous improvement has just been another expression meaning total quality management, which, of course is something that we will “get around to one day”. Worse, the acronyms used ‐ QC, TQM, CI ‐ have joined such exotic practices as JIT (Just‐in‐Time inventory), CAD‐CAM (computer‐aided development and manufacturing) and more recently BPR (business process re‐engineering) in an alphabet soup of consultant‐led packages, available to the discerning manager ‐ at a price.

Teamwork is important for firms’ innovation and effectiveness, but often within-team conflicts arise. Prior literature reported inconsistent associations between conflict and team outcomes. This study aims to clarify these relationships and examine if team reflexivity improves outcomes and weakens intragroup conflict tendencies.

Data were collected through a survey questionnaire of 288 team members working on projects at 41 different high-tech firms in Jordan. The authors then built a model of intragroup conflict effects and used structural equation modeling to test for both direct and indirect effects.

Indirect effects of intragroup conflict were significantly associated with teamwork quality. Teamwork quality was also significantly related to improved team outcomes, and team reflexivity moderated this relationship. Furthermore, it was found that the direct effect of intragroup conflict was not significantly related to either teamwork quality or effectiveness. Finally, results supported the idea that some conflict is required for teams to remain viable, self-critical and innovative.

This is a cross-sectional study conducted in a single country and business industry, which limits the generalizability of results.

Team leaders should use reflexivity to create a sense of openness for collaborative interaction to improve group performance and member satisfaction.

This study provides a verified model to determine the circumstances in which conflict benefits team innovation and effectiveness. A central study contribution is that reflexivity reduces the negative impact of intragroup conflict.

Many organizations are investing much time and effort in the management of quality. A few enlightened ones even have a vision to be the best. G. Howland Blackiston, the president of the Juran Institute, noted recently that, “All around the world companies are waking up to ‘quality’. Everyone is touting quality. Many are attempting it. Some organizations have gotten enviable results by using the concepts of ‘managing for quality’ dramatically to lower their costs, increase their profits and become more competitive in an increasingly competitive market. For these winners, quality has become an integral part of their business strategy”.

Involvement is a topic of long‐standing interest to management scholars and practitioners, as evidenced by the proliferation of concepts (job involvement, organisational involvement, employee involvement, total involvement) designed to operationalise the construct. Involvement is also of crucial importance to total quality management as a vital means to achieve customer satisfaction, delight and commitment through continuous quality improvement. Yet, involvement in total quality is different from traditional involvement – being a holistic, multi‐faceted construct; based on distinctive TQM principles; and aiming at different objectives. Furthermore, a number of team involvement mechanisms (i.e. quality circles, quality improvement teams and/or quality project teams) have been used interchangeably in the TQM literature, indicating that these concepts are theoretically redundant. The analysis undertaken in this paper reveals that, although closely related, these constructs are not identical since they fulfil differentiated functions. Suggestions for advancing the study of total involvement in quality management are rendered.

This study seeks to examine the moderating role of team identification regarding the relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions among spectators of professional sports.

Quantitative data are collected from a questionnaire survey of 257 spectators attending a professional soccer game in Greece. Multiple regression analyses are used to assess the relationships among the constructs of service quality, repurchase intentions, and team identification.

Team identification is shown to moderate the relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions among spectators at this professional sports event. Both overall service quality and two specific service‐quality dimensions (“responsiveness” and “reliability”) are found to be positively associated with repurchase intentions only among respondents with low and medium team identification. No relationship is found between service quality and repurchase intentions among those with high team identification.

Managers of professional sports events who wish to increase attendances by improvements in service quality should first segment their customers according to degree of team affiliation. They should then design their service offerings specifically to meet the service‐quality expectations of sports fans with medium or low team identification.

The study provides valuable empirical evidence of the moderating role of team identification with regard to the relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions among consumers of professional sports events.

Quality empowering management is to the future of renewed worldwide competitiveness what quality control, participative management programmes and zero defects were to quality improvement. Empowerment holds that promoting employee involvement empowers workers to perform as whole, thinking human beings. Empowerment is the glue by which the elements of customer focus, quality process and products, continuous improvements, self‐managing teams, quality measurement, and utilization of the total workforce abilities are held together. Self‐managing teams are one of the major keys in the innovative organization to solving complex problems, increasing productivity, and heightening creativity. For most organizations and managers, quality empowering management is a new responsibility and a radical change in style of management and change in culture requiring new methods and systems.

This paper aims to understand the role of organizational justice (procedural and interactional justice) as a precursor to new product development teamwork quality and team performance; to study the moderating impact of environmental turbulence on these relationships.

This is a survey‐based empirical study of 117 product/project managers based in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. A series of multiple regression analyses were used to obtain results.

Only two of the six facets of teamwork quality (coordination and balance of member contribution) are significantly associated with interactional justice; all six facets (coordination, balance of member contribution, communication, mutual support, effort and cohesion) are associated with procedural justice. Teamwork quality is significantly related to team learning and speed to market; environmental turbulence partially moderates these relationships.

Perceived organizational justice is an important precursor to NPD teamwork quality and team performance. The components of organizational justice (procedural and interactional justice) have different effects on the facets of teamwork quality. The relationships between these precursors and team performance are moderated by environmental turbulence.

To generate new products, NPD managers rely on teams that function well together and show good performance (good team learning and speedy time to market). The findings suggest that NPD managers can significantly improve NPD team performance by increasing team members' perceived level of organizational justice.

While organizational justice has been previously shown to influence team performance, this relationship has not yet been examined in an NPD setting. This is valuable because of the overriding importance of well‐functioning teams in NPD.

The current study focuses the impact of leadership and teams on employees’ psychological climate for change. Integrating streams of research from the change, organizational climate, leader‐member exchange (LMX), and group dynamics literature, the paper proposes that supervisors and teams will shape employees’ climate perceptions as a function of the relationship quality employees experience with these two social units. The impact of the supervisor’s and team’s personal view of the climate, as well as the dyadic quality‐supervisor climate view interaction, and team relations quality‐team climate view interaction were also examined. Results support a main effect for LMX, team relation quality, and team climate view on employee psychological climate for change. In addition, results revealed a multiplicative effect for LMX and supervisor climate view. Overall, the findings suggest that both types of work relationships employees share may serve as potential mechanisms for transforming employees toward change.