Search results

There can be little doubt about the importance and relevance of quality for any service industry. One of the most influential contributors to service quality developments was W. Edwards Deming (1900‐1993). An important component of Deming's philosophy is reflected in his 14‐principles for transforming a service as they indicate what management needs to do to ensure that they and their employees are able to deliver good service quality. The purpose of this paper is first, to select and describe six of the 14 principles and their implications for organisational management; and second, to hightlight the relevance of these principles within higher education.

Six of Deming's principles for transforming organisational management and the application of these to management within the area of higher education are discussed. The selection of these six principles, for discussion is not that they are more important for quality, but because they are among the most important for management in higher education.

Deming's principle on teamwork is not only about problem solving and decision making but more fundamentally it is about breaking down organisational and professional barriers. This is necessary for creating opportunities for people to generate new insights and ideas for improving quality of the service provided by the organisation.

This general review paper discusses six of Deming's principles seen as being important in managing education and considers that organisational management needs to embrace these particular principles if they are to be successful in pursuing their quality initiatives.

Legal process by its very nature cannot be swift; step by step, it must be steady and sure and this takes time. There is no room for hasty decisions for these would tend to defeat its purpose. Time, however, is of the essence and this is set for various aspects of legal action by limitation of actions legislation, which sets periods after which the case is no longer actionable. The periods are adequate and in civil law, generous to avoid injustice being done. The one serious complaint against the process of law, however, is the unwarrantable delays which are possible despite limitation. From the far‐off days of Equity, when Dickens' Jarndyce v Jarndyce, caricatured and exaggerated as it was, described the scene down to the present when delays, often spoken of in Court as outrageous are encountered, to say nothing of the crowded lists in the High Courts and Crown Courts; the result of the state of society and not the fault of the judiciary. Early in 1980, it was reported that 14,500 cases were awaiting trial in the Southeastern Circuit Crown Court alone. Outside the Courts legal work hangs on, to the annoyance of those concerned; from house purchase to probate. Here, the solicitor is very much his own master, unhampered by statutory time limits and the only recourse a client has is to change this solicitor, with no certainty that there will be any improvement, or appeal to the Law Society.

To provide a roadmap for corporate real estate (CRE) directors to effect change in the way they deliver services through enhanced relationships with their “customers,” the users of CRE.

Previous studies and discussions of customer relationship management are combined with the authors' extensive experience to make a case for formalized change management processes and analyze specific methods for enhancing the effectiveness of these processes.

Relationship management integrates real estate processes into larger corporate processes, converting real estate opportunities into competitive advantages. The transition from a reactive to a proactive mode of service is aided by adoption of new mind sets and new skills sets, including tools and processes for communicating within the organization, enhanced financial/analytical acumen, and metrics for determining successful outcomes.

Every CRE department faces unique challenges and opportunities which cannot be fully addressed in a paper designed for broad applicability.

CRE directors will recognize the challenges and opportunities they face and will learn about specific actions and initiatives they can implement to enhance their effectiveness though internal customer relationship management.

Applicability of change and customer relationship management processes to the CRE environment is a new area of focus and is mostly uncharted territory. This roadmap delves deeper than previous papers into specific methods for aligning real estate processes with the “voice of the customer” to further corporate objectives.

But if, my heart, you would speak of prizes won in the Games, look no more for another bright star by day in the empty sky more warming than the sun, nor shall we name any gathering greater than the Olympian.

Rather than organize as traditional firms, many of today’s companies organize as platforms that sit at the nexus of multiple exchange and production relationships. This chapter considers a most basic question of organization in platform contexts: the choice of boundaries. Herein, I investigate how classical economic theories of firm boundaries apply to platform-based organization and empirically study how executives made boundary choices in response to changing market and technical challenges in the early mobile computing industry (the predecessor to today’s smartphones). Rather than a strict or unavoidable tradeoff between “openness-versus-control,” most successful platform owners chose their boundaries in a way to simultaneously open-up to outside developers while maintaining coordination across the entire system.

The Memex Research Institute has proposed a research project to describe in machine‐readable form all the information needed to create electronic “books” in a standard communications format. Two kinds of extended computer file formats employing the MARC structure will be defined: Access Formats that take into consideration the many existing index and abstract system formats and their associated databases; and Document Formats that provide for storage, representation, transmission, and display of machine‐readable works in text or image form. The formats that emerge can be employed by libraries, publishers, information utilities, and computer users worldwide to convert printed works to electronic forms or to create original works in electric format, and thus foment the creation of networked electronic library collections.

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of its own. In this paper, I examine the worldwide diffusion and sociocultural history of this paradigmatic expression. The intent is to explore the ways in which ideas of time and money appear in sedimented form in popular sayings.

My approach is sociological in orientation and multidisciplinary in method. Drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Wolfgang Mieder, and Dean Wolfe Manders, I explore the global spread of Ben Franklin’s famed adage in three ways: (1) via evidence from the field of “paremiology” – that is, the study of proverbs; (2) via online searches for the phrase “Time is Money” in 30-plus languages; and (3) via evidence from sociological and historical research.

The conviction that “Time is Money” has won global assent on an ever-expanding basis for more than 250 years now. In recent years, this phrase has reverberated to the far corners of the world in literally dozens of languages – above all, in the languages of Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Methodologically, this study unites several different ways of exploring the globalization of the capitalist spirit. The main substantive implication is that, as capitalism goes global, so too does the capitalist spirit. Evidence from popular sayings gives us a new foothold for insight into questions of this kind.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the creative city discourse expanding on current tangible and intangible strategies, by integrating recent placemaking tactics to develop a multidimensional framework for designing creative places.

The methodology is based on a framework analysis and critical meta-review of current research on creative city and placemaking.

The findings show that there are three additional factors related to placemaking tactics in the established literature: institutional factors, human factor and arts and design factor emerging from the intersection of creative city and placemaking frameworks.

The findings of this study can inform a more holistic approach to placemaking in creative cities in both theory and practice, namely, a multidimensional place management framework for creative environments of today.

This paper contributes to the current trends in creative city and the development of placemaking guidelines. It provides a simplified view of an exhaustive list of existing literature.

The purpose of this paper is to describe, examine and discuss scholarly literature on reflective leadership, a topic gaining momentum as a result of globalization. Despite the growing popularity of reflective leadership techniques, current and aspiring leaders are struggling to find ways in which to effectively practice reflection as a consequence of a lack of tangible available guidance.

Scholarly literature on reflective leadership was examined and presented in this paper. Discussion on the potential efficacy of reflective leadership is also included as the available literature on the topic is scarce in comparison to other more established leadership techniques.

Reflective leadership has been shown to improve organizational performance. The advent of globalization further intensifies the need for an effective approach leaders may deploy when assessing the long-term consequences of their actions and decisions. Therefore, methods to extend the theory and effective practice of reflective leadership are necessary to enable the future development of leaders.

This paper provides leaders with strategies for improving their leadership effectiveness. Practical techniques for utilizing reflective leadership are offered.

This paper describes the challenges faced by leaders when adopting reflective leadership as a way to improve organizational performance. A universal framework is presented for the effective practice of reflective leadership. This framework provides a basis for future research to test the efficacy of the model.