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The purpose of this paper is to add to the current knowledge of how and why small businesses should engage in quality management (QM) by providing insights from small business owners who are committed advocates of QM. By so doing, to encourage small business owners to see that QM is right – and possible – for any small business wanting to improve performance.

Using an inductive method, semi-structured interviews followed a template of six open-ended questions. Study participants were ten owners of small family-owned business winners of a National Quality Award (National Housing Quality Award (NHQA)), making them industry leaders in applying QM. Data from these QM advocates are presented and discussed.

The cases reveal consistent encouragement for small businesses to engage in QM, with every owner certain that positive outcomes follow. Despite recognizing barriers to engagement, interviewees strongly feel the barriers are small relative to gains realized through QM. These QM advocates advise getting started by choosing one or a few QM tools and/or customizing tools rather than becoming overwhelmed by prospects of the complexity of doing QM to the exacting standards of various quality programs. Finally, they encourage small businesses to stay the course once started on QM.

Limitations are that the paper relies on just ten case studies and these were taken from just one industry. While these limitations cannot be disputed, the rich data, interpretations, and opportunities for future research emerging from the inductive approach seem likely to resonate well beyond the particular industry involved here.

This paper speaks directly to small business owners by including many quotes from owners and summarizing themes from multiple interviews. The advice provided can be acted upon by any small business, with the opportunity of realizing improved business performance.

Few articles provide insights on the merits of QM for small businesses directly from interviews with small business owners. Here, the authors learn about the rationale for small businesses engaging in QM, are given thoughtful comments on how to get started, and told about the realities – including difficulties – of small business QM.

Knowledge management (KM) has emerged in recent times as a phenomenon with wide‐ranging implications for organizational innovation and competitiveness. Supporters argue that as organizations understand the value of KM, they have the opportunity to establish long‐term internal strengths, which will lead to external competitive advantage. Further, we find the current literature advocates that KM can be implemented in every organizational discipline. KM is approached from several different perspectives, and a number of these are used to structure our paper and identify emerging factors in: strategy, human resources management (HRM), information technology (IT), total quality management (TQM), and marketing. This paper presents a summary of key responses to a recent survey of FTSE 100 companies conducted by the authors, which shows that KM is an extremely popular management topic, yet relatively few organizations have serious implementation programs in place. Also presented are findings from longitudinal studies of six case organizations, which have been approaching and deploying KM over the last three years. The academic arguments for organizations to be proactive in KM are strong and compelling. Our research identifies the critical factors that respondents feel are vital for successful KM implementation, and these provide a basis for a further stage of the study which considers how best to develop appropriate performance measurements.

The purpose of this study is to modify the service quality scale (SERVQUAL) for measuring the performance of Islamic banks after modifying and validating it to fit the Islamic banking context. Furthermore, it provides insights for the limitations good service delivery has on maintaining favorable provider’s satisfaction in Islamic banks under conditions when category attitudes have been disrupted and made salient by major disruptive events.

Focus groups (managers of Islamic banks) were conducted to develop context-specific service quality measures. Exploratory factor analysis and CFA have been conducted to test the validity of scales developed and questionnaires were then sent to Islamic banking customers of major Islamic banks in Egypt for testing the relationships between the research variables and hypotheses developed.

The findings of this study are two-fold; identifying a service quality dimension not previously identified in extant service quality measures (SERVQUAL, CARTER), devotion to customers and alerts brand managers that harm to category attitudes caused by societal-level disruptive events can make it difficult to gain high satisfaction even with superior customer service. In this disruptive event context, although high service quality is associated with brand satisfaction, brand satisfaction seems unexpectedly dampened by category attitudes, perhaps, due to the general malaise felt toward the category following the disruptive events.

Islamic institutions are alerted to the heightened need for providing superior service, as even superior service may no longer assure high satisfaction. Extrapolating to an even bigger societal disruptor, in the soon-to-come post-COVID-19 world, category attitudes toward walk-in banking services will be in turmoil and highly salient. So, brand managers will need to develop creative ways to strengthen not just brand attitudes but also to re-stabilize category attitudes if the category is to recover.

This is considered a pioneer study in using mixed methods to re-think the famous SERVQUAL scale in a unique context and relating findings to impacts of disruptive events on attitude toward Islamic banking.

This paper aims to examine the effect of increases in alliance portfolio cultural diversity (IAPCD) on a firm’s performance and how portfolio configuration characteristics moderate this effect, aiming to enable managers to make better partner choice and portfolio configuration decisions to improve performance.

The sample includes 2,326 focal firms from 93 countries that formed 7,616 alliances between the years 1992 and 2006. This study uses generalized method of moments estimation to examine the effects of portfolio changes on next year’s firm sales performance.

Results reveal an inverted-U relationship between IAPCD and firm performance. Data limitations led to examining moderating effects only on the upslope portion of the inverted-U, indicating that an increasing percentage of joint ventures in a firm’s alliance portfolio strengthens IAPCD’s contribution to performance. Further, increased numbers of marketing alliances or research and development alliances and increased percentage of horizontal alliances in an alliance portfolio have a negative moderating effect.

The sample mostly covers large companies. The data indicate that nearly all firms are on the upslope of an inverted-U IAPCD–to–performance relationship, allowing testing of moderating effects pre-inflection point only.

Firms can leverage the additions of culturally diverse partners toward improved performance through astute configuration decisions in alliance portfolio composition.

This paper uses the knowledge-based view to contribute to the alliance portfolio literature. This study asserts that capacity constraints affect firms’ ability to realize performance gains when taking on culturally diverse partners, an effect moderated by portfolio configurations. This paper tests hypothesis with longitudinal data.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between consumers' alliance encounter satisfaction (AES) and their behavioral intentions toward standalone platforms of host and guest partners, and the moderating effects of consumer AES attributions on AES-to-behavioral intention relationships.

This paper extends attribution theory and satisfaction literature to the brand alliance context. The study used 1,470 survey responses from consumers, each having had purchase experiences with one of 16 brand alliances, to test hypotheses.

AES spills over to favorable behavioral intentions toward each alliance partner as a standalone brand. This spillover effect is strengthened by a carryover effect. Intriguingly, if a partner outshines the other and solely receives AES attributions, there is a significant contrast effect adversely affecting the spillover effect for the non-attributed partner.

The findings provide advice on partner selection and alliance resource commitments. Choosing partners well and working synergistically to attain AES is essential for gaining behavioral intention uplift for alliance partners. Brand managers are advised to select partners with comparable rather than superior capabilities. Also, since outcomes of alliance encounters lead to greater gains (or losses) for host brands, hosts are called to be particularly thorough when making alliance resource commitments.

There are few studies of actual consumer experiences with alliances, since most consumer-focused alliance research uses experimental designs. This paper is among the first to examine the effects of actual consumer alliance encounters on behavioral intentions toward each alliance partner as a standalone firm.

Analyses the Bureau of Municipal Research′s (BMR) role in the 1912 New York City School Inquiry to show the democratic orientation of key people trying to transfer scientific management to government. Because much modern public administration literature portrays scientific management as authoritarian, some people assume its proponents wanted to shut the populace out of public‐sector decision making by transfering power from elected officials to experts. The School Inquiry case shows how important reformers committed to scientific management sought to maximize the control that elected officials had over a key administrative function. The BMR stressed this democratic point of view until threats from its principal financial backer forced it to downplay its voice on educational issues and its innovative concept of efficient citizenship.

Sexual crime in the Irish Free State was more than an issue of law, it carried ideological importance in a nation that legitimised itself as a beacon of Celtic Catholicism whilst struggling to maintain credibility in a contested post-colonial landscape. The nation’s police force, An Garda Síochána, had a central role in preserving the nation’s reputation for piety. This chapter explores the views of two of An Garda Síochána’s most senior officers regarding female sexuality and sexual crime; features that were to influence the level of protection and justice Ireland’s women and children were afforded under law.

The present competitive and technological enrivonment, and future activities, in the retail banking sector are considered. A range of financial services, and the types of organisation, financial and non‐financial institutions, which might provide them, are focused upon, and it is concluded that customer care and services plus technology‐based activities are the most sought‐after requirements.