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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.

BOOKS are among the greatest and most wonderful achievements of human genius, they are also a powerful means of struggle for progress. The book accompanies man all his life; it is a creation of his brain and soul. It reflects the life of mankind and is the result of collective efforts of author and publisher, type‐setter and illustrator. But foremost a book is always and everywhere a social and political phenomenon. One of the most apt evaluations of the book was given by V. I. Lenin in 1917, when he was known to state to A. V. Lunacharsky, “The book is a great force indeed”.

This paper conceptually aims to discuss the dual role of knowledge management (KM) and technological innovation, which brings about innovations, although it can be limited by psychological and emotional ownership.

This study examines the real impact of the paper on KM and technological innovation in family small to medium enterprises (FSMEs). This is a unique context affected by psychological and emotional ownership. However, COVID-19 has forced FSMEs to consider new strategies and practices to preserve their competitive advantage.

In this scenario, knowledge exchange, knowledge absorption and technology adoption appear relevant to the innovation process. This study offers a framework for how the duality of KM and technological innovation affects innovation.

Although extant research has explored technological innovation outcomes, a literature review reveals that accumulated studies on the drivers of technological innovation and KM in the context of FSMEs require further inquiry. Family members’ emotional ownership may foster KM because identification with organizational goals enhances individuals’ willingness to access and share information and stimulates new products and technological development.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the determinants of workers’ compensation insurance prices in Portugal.

Multiple regression analysis was used to study the insurance price determinants. The independent variables considered are: payroll, number of employees, and incidence rate. In addition, three categorical variables were used: region, classification of economic activities, and enterprise size. A cross-firm panel data sample from the SABI database of 1,435 firms was considered, over a time horizon from 2010 to 2012. Furthermore, the sample split criterion was the enterprise size.

As expected, the results suggest that payroll and number of employees are related with workers’ compensation insurance prices. Furthermore, incidence rate, region, type of economic activities, and enterprise size have a positive and significant influence on premiums.

More panel data are needed to allow a greater focus on the impacts of GDP fluctuations and sectoral consolidation on insurance pricing. Further research could also include the impact of capital/reserving cycles, which can be driven both by economic shocks and the competition cycle. It is well known that insurers tend to reduce reserving standards when under pressure, and this can result in inadequate pricing.

The process of workers’ compensation insurance price formation is disentangled. The results suggest that the workers’ compensation insurance premiums behave as expected, especially under periods of economic strain. Therefore, workers’ compensation rate regulation should take this evidence into account, specifically through the establishment of minimum rates, which will protect the insurer, the employer, and the employees alike.

The paper is part of a considerable literature on insurance pricing in workers’ compensation, most of which has centred on private markets in the USA. This paper is the first empirical work that employs private market data for Portugal.

Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although improvisation has been conceptualized as a way of managing such paradoxes, the process of improvisation itself contains paradoxes. In this essay, we return to jazz improvisation to identify a new paradox of interest to organizational scholars: the paradox of intentionality. To improvise creatively, jazz musicians report that they must “try not to try,” or risk undermining the very spontaneity that is prized in jazz. Jazz improvisers must therefore control their ability to relinquish deliberate control of their actions. To accomplish this, they engage in three interdependent practices. Jazz musicians intentionally surrender their sense of active control (“letting go”) while creating a passive externalized role for this sense of active control (using a “third ear”). Letting go allows new and unexpected ideas to emerge, while the metaphorical third ear can identify promising ideas or problematic execution and, in doing so, re-engage active agency (“grabbing hold”). Examining the practices within creative improvisation reveals the complexity of the lived experience of the paradox, which we argue suggests further integration among organizational research on improvisation, creativity, and paradox.

Purpose – Patient safety and adverse events continue to present significant challenges to the US health care delivery system. Mandated reporting of adverse events can be a mechanism to “coerce” hospitals to identify, evaluate, and ultimately improve the quality and safety of patient care. The objective of this study is to determine if the coercion of mandated reporting impacts hospital patient safety scores.

Methods – We utilize the US News and World Report 2012–2013 Best Hospital Rankings which includes patient safety data from US teaching hospitals. The dependent variable is a composite measure of six indicators of patient safety during and after surgery. The independent variable is state mandated reporting of hospital adverse events. Three control variables are included: Magnet accreditation status, surgical volume, and the percentage of surgical admissions.

Findings – Using ordered logistic regression (n = 670 hospitals) we find a positive, but not significant, relationship between state mandated reporting and better patient safety scores.

Implications – This finding suggests that regulatory policy may not actually prompt performance improvement, and our data point to the need for further study of both formal and informal processes to manage patient safety within the hospital.

Originality – While increased reporting of adverse events has been linked to hospitals providing safer care, no research to date has examined whether or not state-level mandates actually lead to improvements in patient safety.

The purpose of this paper is to produce a general Balanced Scorecard (BSC) model that is designed and delimited for managing research and development (R&D) activities.

A methodology based on the validity of content of an instrument of measurement, within the analytical framework of the validation of scales or constructs was employed.

The BSC model for R&D developed in this study has been subject to testing with recognised experts in management and in R&D. It has enabled a proposal to be put forward in respect of those indicators that best define the factors related to organisational effectiveness in the achievement of the strategic objectives set by companies, and to inter‐relate them and group them under five broad perspectives of the BSC.

The BSC will be validated as a construct in future research.

The result is the design of a scale of measurement that ranks the empirical indicators under the perspectives of the BSC; for the measurement of results, this instrument will provide unique values that group all the previous indicators in a single scale of measurement.

No studies dealing with the content validation of a BSC have been found in the literature on innovation.

Recognising the increasing relevance of digital platforms in socio-economic dynamics, the paper aims at investigating in which ways digital platforms can influence the economic performances of Italian small and medium enterprises (SMEs) actively engaged in foreign countries.

The paper adopts the interpretative lens provided by the exploration–exploitation dichotomy within current studies in knowledge management for defining knowledge-based factors able to influence the economic performance of Italian SMEs in foreign countries. An explorative study on secondary data related to 746 Italian SMEs is conducted for testing via structural equation modelling (SEM) the positive relationships between (1) SME's investment in information and communication technologies (ICT), (2) number of languages available for the SME's website and (3) number of languages available for SME's social pages and SME's return on sales (ROS) in foreign countries.

The results underline the key role of exploitation factors in terms of influence on SME's performance in foreign countries.

The paper enriches current studies about international marketing providing preliminary evidence about the key role of exploitation factors in influencing SME's performance in foreign countries.

The perception that a particular place is unsafe to live can significantly affect the quality of life of individuals who live there. In Brazil, crime rates in urban centres increase every year, which leads to a constant sense of fear shared by the population. Safety perception may affect the way people move in their neighbourhood and interact with the public environment. In the present study, we addressed the question of safety perception of residents of three areas of the Federal District, the capital of Brazil, and how this perception impacts walking behaviour. Seventeen residents participated in go-along ethnographic interviews, being accompanied in their daily journeys. Each interview recorded the interaction of the participants with the surroundings during their journey. The observations were submitted to content analysis to verify how perception of safety, insecurity and fear of crime affect the decision to walk. The results indicate that the decision to walk interacted with a more positive view of the neighbourhood, that is, perception of safety enhances walking. On the other hand, perception of insecurity and fear of crime discourage the occurrence of this behaviour. The more people fear crime and perceive a place as unsafe, the less they walk and the more they avoid walking in certain places. We conclude with a short note about the use of participatory mobile methods for the study of complex social phenomena such as perceptions and fear of crime.