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The purpose of this paper is to determine the main total quality management (TQM) elements adopted and the respective results achieved by higher education institutions (HEIs) in Greece.

A research study was designed and carried out in private sector Greek HEIs. Fifteen HEIs were approached through interviews based on a structured questionnaire. The measured variables of the TQM elements and results identified in the literature were used as the questionnaire items. Descriptive statistics were applied to determine the TQM elements mostly adopted and the results achieved by the HEIs.

According to the findings, the TQM elements mostly adopted by the Greek HEIs concern the following: student focus, leadership and top management commitment, strategic quality planning, process management and teaching staff and employee involvement. On the other hand, the most significant results achieved by the sample HEIs concern quality performance improvement, teaching staff and employee satisfaction, operational performance improvement and the positive impact on society.

The subjective data collection involved chief executive officers of a small sample of HEIs operating in a European Union country. Thus, no advanced statistical methods could be applied. Based on these limitations, future research studies are recommended.

By focusing on specific TQM elements, an HEI can develop a robust TQM model, approach business excellence, which can, in turn, help the HEI apply for appropriate quality awards, and finally derive significant benefits. In doing so, an HEI can lay the foundations for being competitive in the current global context that is characterised by an economic downturn.

This study contributes to the literature by empirically determining the TQM elements mostly adopted as well as the respective results achieved by Greek HEIs in a period of economic downturn. This is the first research study in the field of TQM in higher education that has been carried out in Greece in a period where many service organisations, whether private or public, are making significant efforts to withstand the current downturn and achieve a sustainable growth.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a national framework for promoting business excellence (NFPBE) using a quality management assessment framework (QMAF) with information knowledge communication (IKC) as an enabler.

The NFPBE using the plan–do–check–act (PDCA) cycle is developed, re-enforcing key quality management aspects/areas including national quality awards, QMAF summary and national innovation programmes using a meta-analysis.

The operationalising of the NFPBE is enabled and supported by an auditing tool to assess the degree of mentoring provided by universities/research institutions/consulting firms to participating firms whose progress will be assessed by the QMAF. It was emphasised that the success of the framework requires the buy-in of national governments to support the programme through stimulus incentives such as government assistance with the costs of research and development, and cooperative research ventures between universities and companies.

The framework is conceptualised into a process flowchart, which is a blueprint to advancing business excellence in organisations at a national scale. The study is limited to only the conceptualisation of the framework. Therefore, an extended study of the framework implementation/application is required for revealing implementation guidelines.

The national framework has a propensity to enhancing the business excellence of organisations at a national level. Therefore, quality managers and policy makers could use the framework to understand the quality management shortfalls and consider strategies to achieving business excellence.

This research study proposed a blueprint to advancing quality excellence in organisations at a national level, guided by several quality frameworks.

Literature refers to the key factors of total quality management (TQM) based on studies carried out in individual countries. However, few studies focus on studying the TQM factors in service companies based on multinational data. The purpose of this paper is to empirically identify the key TQM factors and their impact on internal and external customer performance measures across different countries.

The research questions regarding the TQM factors and their effects were examined using a sample of service organisations from three countries (131 from Greece, 70 from Mexico and 151 from Spain). TQM factors and their impact on employee and customer satisfaction were analysed separately for each country. Exploratory factor analyses, coupled with multiple linear regression analyses, were conducted.

The key TQM factors identified are common among the three participating countries and can be summarised as follows: quality practices of top management, process management, employee quality management, customer focus, and employee knowledge and education. The adoption level of these five key factors of TQM varies across service organisations in different countries. The results also confirmed that some of the TQM elements are antecedents of customer- and employee-focused performance.

Multinational service organisations may use such an instrument to evaluate TQM implementation among worldwide operations and then benchmark their performance. In addition, an understanding of similarities and differences among countries would help managers around the world to address difficulties of TQM implementation related to the country culture.

Previous studies have compared key TQM factors across different countries in manufacturing, but overall, there has been a little attempt in the literature to analyse the adoption of TQM factors among service firms, as well the relationships between quality improvement and performance across different geographical regions.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the level of the importance and implementation of the critical success factors (CSFs) required for the appropriate function of a quality management system (QMS) in ISO 9001:2008-certified companies and the differences between the CSFs and the demographic variables of the companies.

A research project was carried out in Greek companies from all business sectors using the questionnaire technique. The selected companies all implement a QMS in accordance with the ISO 9001:2008 standard. Correspondence analysis, a methodology from the multidimensional statistics field, was also used to identify significant differences between the importance and implementation levels of the CSFs of the QMS.

The importance that quality assurance managers attribute to these CSFs was high enough in most categories, but there was a significant difference in the implementation level, which displayed much lower scores. The most important factors seem to be management commitment, education, and communication, while the least important were the availability of data and use of statistics. Differences between categories of demographic variables were present only for the firm size variable.

The study was based on the perception (i.e. subjective data) of only one quality manager/representative of each company.

The paper provides information to certified companies in Greece on the differences in the importance and implementation levels of quality management practices (especially for hard factors) and motivation to investigate possible causes. Moreover, the most important factors for the successful implementation of ISO 9001 are presented.

This paper describes the implementation and given importance of the CSFs in companies with experience of the ISO 9001:2008 standard and for the analysis of the data a methodology from the multidimensional field is applied, with the complementary use of some special tables of coincidences.

There is growing evidence of a knowledge gap in the association of maintenance with production activities in bottling plants. Indeed, insights into how to jointly optimise these activities are not clear. In this paper, two optimisation models, Taguchi schemes and response surface methodology are proposed.

Borrowing from the “hard” total quality management elements in optimisation and prioritisation literature, two new models were developed based on factor, level and orthogonal array selection, signal-to-noise ratio, analysis of variance and optimal parametric settings as Taguchi–ABC and Taguchi–Pareto. An additional model of response surface methodology was created with analysis on regression, main effects, residual plots and surface plots.

The Taguchi S/N ratio table ranked planned maintenance as the highest. The Taguchi–Pareto shows the optimal parametric setting as A4B4C1 (28 h of production, 30.56 shifts and 37 h of planned maintenance). Taguchi ABC reveals that the planned maintenance and number of shifts will influence the outcome of production greatly. The surface regression table reveals that the production hours worked decrease at a value of planned maintenance with a decrease in the number of shifts.

This is the first time that joint optimisation for bottling plant will be approached using Taguchi–ABC and Taguchi–Pareto. It is also the first time that response surface will be applied to optimise a unique platform of the bottling process plant.

This study aims to critically investigate the structural relationships between total quality management (TQM), service innovation and sustainability performance in the public service sector of the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The study employed an online survey to collect data from 400 employees working in eight selected UAE public service sector organisations located in Abu Dhabi. The collected data were analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) to empirically examine whether TQM practices improve service innovation and, subsequently, sustainability performance in the UAE's public service sector.

The results show that TQM has a significant impact on service innovation and sustainability performance in the UAE's public service sector. Additionally, service innovation partially mediates the relationship between TQM and sustainability performance.

The public service sector's TQM practices and service innovation in the UAE have a much greater impact on social and environmental sustainability than on economic sustainability performance. Adopting five dimensions of TQM (following the Abu Dhabi Award for Excellence in Government Performance [ADAEP] model) across the UAE's public organisations will enable government departments to deliver innovative services to its beneficiaries.

This study provides a substantial contribution by addressing the gaps in the literature. Very few studies have empirically investigated the possible association between TQM, service innovation and sustainability performance in public sector organisations, particularly in developing countries such as the UAE, where the increasing efforts in TQM practices are still in their emerging stages, mainly targeting innovative service offerings and sustainable performance.

The purpose of this study is to determine the main total quality management (TQM) factors adopted and the respective results achieved by local authorities – municipalities. Determining the degree to which TQM influences the respective results is also an aim of the present study.

A research study was designed to be carried out in Greek local authorities – municipalities, 125 of which were approached through interviews with chief executive officers (CEOs) based on a structured questionnaire. The TQM practices and results identified in the literature were used as measured variables of the questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and linear regression analyses were applied for the purpose of the study.

The TQM philosophy is not highly adopted by the Greek local authorities participating in the present study. Moreover, the Greek local authorities do not seem to derive significant TQM benefits. Finally, adopting TQM strongly and positively influences, first, operational and quality performance of the local authorities; second, citizen satisfaction and society results; and third, employee satisfaction.

Subjective data were collected from the CEOs of a small sample of local authorities operating in a European Union country, under circumstances of financial crisis. Based on these limitations, future research studies are recommended.

Areas for improvement are identified for a local authority to develop a robust TQM model, approach business excellence and derive significant benefits.

This is the first research study in the field of TQM to be conducted at city-level administration in Greece.

Primary education (PE) forms the foundation of high-quality education systems, but it is often underestimated. This paper aims to develop and empirically validate a measurement instrument to study the current stage of total quality management (TQM) implementation in PE.

This study developed a seven-dimensional and a 37-item instrument administered to education professionals at public PE institutions in Greece to determine the current stage of TQM implementation at their institution; 2,088 responses were received in total. Principal component analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling were adopted to test the research instrument.

The findings supported the validity and reliability of the instrument and demonstrated that the proposed measures represent actual dimensions that can be used to explore the implementation of TQM in PE. Results also showed that the respondents rated highly the positive impact that TQM can have on their schools, although nonhuman resources have been found inadequate and problematic.

The field of TQM in PE lacks empirical evidence; this paper provides deep insight into the elements that demonstrate the perception and status of TQM implementation and can support quality implementation plans.

This study adds value to the TQM literature by developing an instrument for use in PE educational institutions and validating it in a real environment. Practitioners and researchers are thus supplied with the means to facilitate TQM practices, identify weaknesses and opportunities and contribute to social empowerment.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine the influence of working condition on faculty retention and quality education in the private higher education sector; and second, to see whether there is any mediating role of faculty retention linking working condition and quality education in the private universities in Bangladesh.

To attain these objectives, a total of 516 data were collected from the faculty members of the private universities located all over the country based on random sampling procedure. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling technique.

The findings of the study reveal that though working condition has a direct significant influence on both faculty retention and quality education and faculty retention has a partial mediating influence on quality education in private higher education institutes in Bangladesh.

From a research perspective, the study results demonstrate once again the robustness of the Muslow’s hierarchy need theory of motivation for helping to explain the faculty members of the private universities. As more and more studies of faculty behavior and its antecedents are done within the similar framework, the author is more able to discover and confirm which antecedents are most important, helping the author build a robust theory of quality education affected based on human resource practices by the management of the institutes.

From a practical perspective, as a cumulative body of work on the nexus between human resource management and quality education emerges, the author will be better able to advise private university authorities on the elements they need to address in order to excel quality education. In this study, the one area of findings that may help university authorities the most concerns work environment. These findings imply that in order to excel quality education the authorities of the private universities should focus more on friendly and enjoyable working environment for prolonging faculty retention and excelling quality education.

This study has revealed an important contribution focusing the influence of working condition on faculty retention as well as quality education in private universities in Bangladesh.

The purpose of this paper is to report an investigation on the advancement of QA to TQM for construction contractors in Hong Kong.

The investigation is based on a questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was answered by 40 respondents working in construction contractors in Hong Kong including project managers, section managers, senior engineers and quality managers. The data obtained from the questionnaire survey were then analysed.

The results of the questionnaire survey are presented in the form of the levels of application of QA and TQM as practised by the contracting organizations in Hong Kong. The findings suggest that contractors are fully familiar with the application of QA but are less familiar with that of TQM. Both QA and TQM items that are mostly practised and seldom practised are discussed. In association with the findings, potential areas for exploratory studies in quality management systems and the quality culture of the Hong Kong construction industry are suggested.

The paper explores new directions in the advancement of QA to TQM for construction contractors and offers help to practitioners in providing a direction for construction quality management improvement.