Search results
1 – 10 of 299Francesco Schiavone, Maria Cristina Pietronudo, Annamaria Sabetta and Marco Ferretti
Total quality management is a valuable approach to continuously improve the quality of organizations; however, scholars debate its applicability to services, which require…
Abstract
Purpose
Total quality management is a valuable approach to continuously improve the quality of organizations; however, scholars debate its applicability to services, which require specific best practices that are different from those related to manufacturing. Moreover, digitization is pervading all kinds of services, but little has been written about total quality service practices in digital-based companies. For this purpose, the authors provide a holistic model of total quality service that reflects the peculiarities of such companies, guided by the question: how do total quality service practices change in digital-based service organizations?
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conduct an illustrative case study on Healthware Group, a global integrated digital health organization, to evaluate theoretical assumptions about total quality service practices in the digital environment.
Findings
The findings allow to validate the model provided. In addition, the study enables them to observe the changes the authors are witnessing in service provision in the digital era and the consequent transformation of best practices. To be accurate, the authors cannot refer to a full transformation in digital-based companies but rather to the enrichment and extension of TQS practices. The best illustration of these conclusions has been summarized in a set of propositions corresponding to seven of the key levers of a TQS model.
Originality/value
The paper represents the first attempt to discuss the relationship between total quality service and digitalization, offering a set of propositions for academics and insights for practitioners. The model can be used as a tool to visualize the different levers that successful implementation of TQS in digital-based services companies can rely on.
Details
Keywords
Johan Marx and Cecilia Jacoba de Swardt
The purpose of this research was first to determine the competencies mandatory of risk managers, and second, to consider the implications of such competencies in determining…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this research was first to determine the competencies mandatory of risk managers, and second, to consider the implications of such competencies in determining modules appropriate for inclusion in any prospective undergraduate qualification with specialisation in risk management.
Design/methodology/approach
A qualitative research approach was followed, involving academics teaching risk management in a focus group and making use of interactive qualitative analysis (IQA).
Findings
The competencies identified were business management skills, financial knowledge, an understanding of the risk management process, governance and compliance, people management and technical skills. These will be explained in greater detail in the paper.
Research limitations/implications
The implications for teaching are that an undergraduate curriculum in risk management will have to combine majors such as business management, financial management, risk management, industrial psychology and communication. These majors need to be complemented by modules in governance and compliance management, as well as information and communication technology.
Practical implications
The implication for practice is that risk management professionals and members of the Institute of Risk Management of South Africa need to avail themselves to serve on an advisory board of academic departments offering risk management qualifications. Risk management is a developing science and requires inputs about research and the curriculation of qualifications.
Social implications
The implication for public policy is that the South African Qualifications Authority and the Council for Higher Education should reconsider their requirements for designators (specialised qualifications). The implications for research are that IQA provides clarity on the knowledge and skills required to develop a competency-based qualification in risk management. Further research should benchmark qualifications and propose a curriculum for a bachelor’s degree in risk management.
Originality/value
The use of IQA is a novel way of ensuring rigour and objectivity in arriving at a description of the required knowledge, skills, values and attributes of risk managers. This paper will assist in the compilation of a new curriculum for an undergraduate qualification in risk management; thus, ensuring such qualification will provide a competency-based qualification that will meet the needs of the profession.
Details
Keywords
Process mining provides a generic collection of techniques to turn event data into valuable insights, improvement ideas, predictions, and recommendations. This paper uses…
Abstract
Purpose
Process mining provides a generic collection of techniques to turn event data into valuable insights, improvement ideas, predictions, and recommendations. This paper uses spreadsheets as a metaphor to introduce process mining as an essential tool for data scientists and business analysts. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate that process mining can do with events what spreadsheets can do with numbers.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses the main concepts in both spreadsheets and process mining. Using a concrete data set as a running example, the different types of process mining are explained. Where spreadsheets work with numbers, process mining starts from event data with the aim to analyze processes.
Findings
Differences and commonalities between spreadsheets and process mining are described. Unlike process mining tools like ProM, spreadsheets programs cannot be used to discover processes, check compliance, analyze bottlenecks, animate event data, and provide operational process support. Pointers to existing process mining tools and their functionality are given.
Practical implications
Event logs and operational processes can be found everywhere and process mining techniques are not limited to specific application domains. Comparable to spreadsheet software widely used in finance, production, sales, education, and sports, process mining software can be used in a broad range of organizations.
Originality/value
The paper provides an original view on process mining by relating it to the spreadsheets. The value of spreadsheet-like technology tailored toward the analysis of behavior rather than numbers is illustrated by the over 20 commercial process mining tools available today and the growing adoption in a variety of application domains.
Details
Keywords
Thomas K. Maran, Urs Baldegger and Kilian Klösel
Leading with vision while granting employees autonomy is one effective organizational response to the demands of a dynamic external environment. The former is thought to align…
Abstract
Purpose
Leading with vision while granting employees autonomy is one effective organizational response to the demands of a dynamic external environment. The former is thought to align followers' behavior by providing guidance, the latter to increase variance in their behavior by relinquishing control; both exert beneficial but distinct effects on organizational performance. What has remained uncharted heretofore is how these leader behaviors shape their followers' cognition and, subsequently, yield improvements in performance. The authors argue that a leader's vision communication transforms followers' cognitive representation of their work. This not only enables them to specify their goals in alignment with the vision (goal clarity) but also to locate the meaning of their work within the bigger picture of the vision (construal level). By contrast, perceived autonomy in terms of power-sharing might directly affect followers' work engagement more narrowly.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors tested the model on a sample of 408 employees from eleven enterprises of a holding company. In the survey, employees reported perceived vision communication and autonomy provided by their leader. Furthermore, the authors assessed the employees' goal attainment. To capture how employees represent their daily work activities, the authors measured their construal level and their goal clarity.
Findings
The results show that both perceived vision communication and granted autonomy improve employees' goal achievement. Moreover, two processes mediate the relationship between vision communication and goal achievement in followers: first, specifying goals in terms of clarity; second, composing a higher-level mental construal of their work. In contrast, no mediation of empowering leader behaviors was found.
Originality/value
Better goal achievement through visionary leadership is therefore achieved through cognitive alignment of followers, while leader-granted autonomy acts as a motivational tool directly on performance.
Details
Keywords
Maryke Hunter-Hüsselmann, Dalene Pieterse and Changu Batisani
This chapter discusses the growing importance of research-related information in the face of increased complexities and competitiveness within higher education environments…
Abstract
This chapter discusses the growing importance of research-related information in the face of increased complexities and competitiveness within higher education environments globally. It provides some reflections on the importance of institutional research cultures to effectively address these challenges, focussing on the African context, and the role of effective research support through institutional structures such as a dedicated research office. The increasingly strategic role of research management has led to the need for a more active and visionary role in the positioning of institutions by supporting decision-making and contributing to the development and visibility of institutional research portfolios. The authors provide their insights into the scope of research-related information, the need for research offices to perform this strategic function, how these information sets can be applied in reports, evidence-based decisions, institutional showcasing, and enhanced research support. The chapter includes aspects to consider when establishing a research-related information management function within institutions.
Details
Keywords
David Holger Schmidt, Dirk van Dierendonck and Ulrike Weber
This study focuses on leadership in organizations where big data analytics (BDA) is an essential component of corporate strategy. While leadership researchers have conducted…
Abstract
Purpose
This study focuses on leadership in organizations where big data analytics (BDA) is an essential component of corporate strategy. While leadership researchers have conducted promising studies in the field of digital transformation, the impact of BDA on leadership is still unexplored.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on semi-structured interviews with 33 organizational leaders and subject-matter experts from various industries. Using a grounded theory approach, a framework is provided for the emergent field of BDA in leadership research.
Findings
The authors present a conceptual model comprising foundational competencies and higher order roles that are data analytical skills, data self-efficacy, problem spotter, influencer, knowledge facilitator, visionary and team leader.
Research limitations/implications
This study focuses on BDA competency research emerging as an intersection between leadership research and information systems research. The authors encourage a longitudinal study to validate the findings.
Practical implications
The authors provide a competency framework for organizational leaders. It serves as a guideline for leaders to best support the BDA initiatives of the organization. The competency framework can support recruiting, selection and leader promotion.
Originality/value
This study provides a novel BDA leadership competency framework with a unique combination of competencies and higher order roles.
Details
Keywords
Linda Höglund, Maria Mårtensson and Kerstin Thomson
The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the conceptualisation and operationalisation of public value in practice by applying Moore's (1995) strategic triangle as…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to enhance understanding of the conceptualisation and operationalisation of public value in practice by applying Moore's (1995) strategic triangle as an analytical framework to study strategic management and management control practices in relation to public value.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses an interpretative longitudinal case study approach including qualitative methods of document studies and interviews between 2017 and 2019.
Findings
In the strategic triangle, the three nodes of authorising environment, public value creation and operational capacity are interdependent, and alignment is a necessity for a strategy to be successful. But this alignment is vulnerable. The findings suggest three propositions: (1) strategic alignment is vulnerable to management control practices having a strong focus on performance measurements, (2) strategic alignment is vulnerable to standardised management control practices and (3) strategic alignment is vulnerable to politically driven management control practices.
Originality/value
With the strategic triangle as a base, this paper tries to understand what kind of management control practices enable and/or constrain public value, as there has been a call for this kind of research. In this way it adds to earlier research on public value, to the growing interest in the strategic triangle as an analytical framework in analysing empirical material and to the request for more empirical studies on the subject. The strategic triangle also embraces political factors, government agendas and political leadership for which there has also been a call for more research.
Details
Keywords
Jestine Philip, Katharina Gilli and Michael Knappstein
Even with the recognized impact organizational leaders have on the outcome of digital transformation (DT), a comprehensive scholarly understanding of the competencies that leaders…
Abstract
Purpose
Even with the recognized impact organizational leaders have on the outcome of digital transformation (DT), a comprehensive scholarly understanding of the competencies that leaders must possess to lead a DT to success is lacking.
Design/methodology/approach
To derive and list the competencies considered by experts as necessary for managing DT, the authors recruited 18 international senior managers with relevant experience and applied the Delphi method to survey the managers. Upon the completion of three survey rounds and the authors modifying the response list until consensus was reached, 39 items were shortlisted as constituting key competencies for managing DT. Furthermore, the authors engaged in inductive theorizing to derive propositional statements using these findings.
Findings
The practitioners agreed on visionary thinking, agility, understanding the value of data, data-driven decision-making, knowledge of strategy and accepting change as the most important requirements for managing DT. Through inductive theorizing, the authors further derived that the seven discovered clusters fell into two broader competencies – behavioral and strategic – and that each behavioral competency would have varying importance depending on the country and industry that the organization operates in.
Research limitations/implications
As is typical for Delphi studies that involve multiple survey rounds, the study participant response rate was moderate. The implications of this study, in finding that a variety of leadership competencies are needed to ensure successful DT, validate prior research that people, not technology, drive DT.
Practical implications
This study helps mitigate assumptions that successful DT processes are only possible by hiring technological experts, as doing so highlights the importance of behavioral leadership competencies.
Originality/value
The study is one of the first to interlink digital leadership with DT by inductively theorizing behavioral and strategic competencies. The authors also establish that contexts are vital in determining which aspects of leadership competencies are deemed most important in driving DT.
Details
Keywords
Riccardo Torelli and Federica Balluchi
Amid the current global crisis, biodiversity remains a topic that is often relegated to a few disciplines. Many issues related to the relationship between organizations and the…
Abstract
Purpose
Amid the current global crisis, biodiversity remains a topic that is often relegated to a few disciplines. Many issues related to the relationship between organizations and the ecosystem remain unexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by examining the characteristics of the interrelationship between these two complex and dynamic systems.
Design/methodology/approach
This research is conducted using a constructivist approach, with an interpretivist perspective and a case study methodology. Through this research perspective and an exploratory multiple case study (holistic), the authors assess the implications related to the concept of biodiversity and the impacts that organizational choices could have on the consideration and management of this complex concept.
Findings
The desire of these entrepreneurs to change their ways of doing things and try to produce in a way that respects the ecosystem and enhances natural genetic diversity, while simultaneously drawing value from it in a healthy and sustainable manner, is evident. The orientation toward a sustainable and ecologically innovative business brings the concept of profit into the background on several occasions, leading these bakery entrepreneurs to be visionary green entrepreneurs (or ecopreneurs). The desire to be sustainable and to change the ways of “business as usual” makes these companies and their entrepreneurs an example of “sustainability-as-flourishing.”
Originality/value
By adopting the systems thinking approach and multiple case studies, this study examines the interrelation between some innovative small companies (bakeries) and biodiversity, their motivations to actively engage in biodiversity protection and their roles in protecting agrobiodiversity as well as the natural wealth of the ecosystem.
Details
Keywords
Antti Ylitalo, Elina Laukka, Tarja Heponiemi and Outi Ilona Kanste
The purpose of this study is to describe primary health-care managers’ perceptions of management competencies at different management levels in digital health services using the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to describe primary health-care managers’ perceptions of management competencies at different management levels in digital health services using the management competency assessment program as a framework.
Design/methodology/approach
A secondary analysis study involving 21 semi-structured individual interviews was conducted among Finnish primary health-care managers at different management levels (frontline, middle and senior). The deductive framework method was used to analyze the data.
Findings
Similarities and differences were found in management competencies between different levels of management. Competencies related to the use of digitalization were highlighted by managers at all management levels. Managers at all management levels were involved in developing digital solutions and supporting employees in using digital solutions in their work. Frontline and middle managers emphasized more issues related to day-to-day management and communication with employees, whereas senior managers highlighted the management of large entities.
Research limitations/implications
In the secondary analysis, data were used for purposes other than originally intended. Therefore, the data are subject to limitations of the methodology applied and should be transferred to other contexts with caution.
Practical implications
Identifying the management competencies needed to manage digital health services is important to target managers’ training according to needs in the future.
Social implications
The results could be used to develop the management of digital health services, as well as improve digital health services and their deployment.
Originality/value
Previous literature mostly examined managers’ informatics competencies and paid little attention to other management competencies. This study discusses more broadly the management competencies that digital health services require from managers at different levels of management.
Details