Critical Success Factors of Total Quality Management

The past decade has seen many firms focusing on Total Quality Management (TQM) as a means of improving profits, market share and competitiveness. Although TQM is a proven approach for success in manufacturing, services and the public sector, several organizations failed in their campaigns because of many reasons like lack of top management commitment, ignoring customers etc. This paper presents a study on certain specific factors that impact the success of the TQM implementation purely based on the secondary research. The research points out that, though most organizations start TQM efforts for their success, they are frequently exposed to the factors which may cause their TQM efforts to delay or even fail. TQM is a sure bet to reverse poor performance, but when it did not yield the expected results, it was deemed a failure. The review has been done to identify the common problems that lead to the failure of TQM implementation in the organization and has pointed out the critical success factors of TQM. Nevertheless, the overall results of this research imply that the understanding of the elements that cause failure to the TQM implementation can provide needed help for companies involved in long-term continuous improvement efforts. If the advanced TQM approach is properly followed, it will help the companies to achieve organizational excellence.     

SECTOR-SPECIFIC PATTERNS OF ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN CHANGE*

Recent approaches to understanding change in organizations have moved beyond just looking at structure and have focused on the role of values in defining the manner in which organizations change. This article integrates the concepts of design archetypes, tracks and high impact systems in an effort to understand the patterns of change for an institutionally specific set of organizations. the sample used for the study was a set of Canadian national sport organizations undergoing institutional change. Three design archetypes (Kitchen Table, Boardroom and Executive Office) that represent institutionally specific coherent value-structure relationships were used to show that patterns of change are determined by the extent to which the coherence of organizational design elements shift over time. Using these design archetypes as a model for change, tracks were identified that provided an indication of the degree and direction of change and the extent to which design coherence was maintained. This paper shows that there is variety in organizational design coherence and that this is related to patterns of change. In addition, reorientations to a new design are signalled by changes in structures or systems that are central to the organization's purpose and as such can have a high impact on moving the organization to a new design.     

Human Capital,the Millennial's Reign,and the Need For Servant Leadership

Human capital has been a major emphasis and priority for organizations for the past 15–20 years; however, changing demographics in the workplace dictate that organizations step up these efforts. The current paper explores three generational cohorts, with particular emphasis on the Millennial generation as this cohort will encompass upward of 50% of the workforce by 2020. If organizations want to compete for and retain top Millennial talent, organizations must make themselves attractive to Millennials. This will require that organizations develop a leadership base that is suited to lead Millennials. We suggest that servant leadership is likely the optimal leadership style for creating an organization rich in human capital development and for making an organization a preferred workplace for the Millennial generation.     

A Research Agenda for Examining the Role of Compensation Consultants in the Executive Pay Process

Executive compensation has risen dramatically during the past several years. In some cases, organizations have lost money and value, while their executives have received generous if not excessive compensation. The business press has brought this issue to the attention of the American public and Congress, resulting in increasing examination of all parties involved in the pay-setting process. The selection and use of compensation consultants has come under particular scrutiny. Critics have argued that these firms suffer from serious conflicts of interest, such that they may be partly responsible for the rise in pay and the decoupling of pay from performance. Academic attention to the impact of compensation consultants in the pay-setting process, however, has been lacking, and thus most of the analysis of the subject is based on anecdotal evidence and superficial arguments. In the interest of fostering a more rigorous approach, this paper presents several theoretical perspectives that could be used to examine and explain the influence of compensation consultants on executive compensation. We present these theories in light of a specific case and suggest directions for future research.     

Issues in management information systems planning

lt has been advocated that management information Systems (MIS) planning is an important activity which an organization must perform in order to achieve organizational goals. In this paper, based on a field study of 131 large organizations, several issues related to MIS planning have been examined. These issues include: the impact of current MIS services on the overall competitive position of an organization; the impact of future MIS capabilities on the long-term competitive viability of the organization; the factors which prompted organizations to develop an MIS plan; the formal business planning processes used for the MIS function; the areas covered in the MIS plan; the main driving force in undertaking the development of a long-term MIS plan; and, the usefulness of the MIS plan in directing the organizational MIS activites.It has been shown that organizations vary significantly on each of these major MIS planning issues.     

Nepotism as a Dilemma for Managing Human Resources Overseas

This exploratory study explored the impact of nepotism practices on employees, management, and organizations in two overseas countries: Egypt and Jordan. Results indicated that nepotism practices have a negative impact on employees, management, and organizations. This negative impact has led to employees' absenteeism/turnover, management disappointment/frustration/stress, and organization ineffectiveness.     

对失业者闲暇生活质量的研究

失业群体由于缺失职业劳动时间和相应的收入来源,因而在闲暇时间和活动等方面都表现出一定的特性,成为一个极富研究价值和需要予以关注的特殊研究群体.本文通过对50多名失业职工闲暇时间利用和闲暇生活质量的问卷调查,分析了失业者生活时间结构的特点,考察了其闲暇生活的特殊性,对其闲暇生活质量进行了关注,并在此基础上,提出了失业群体在闲暇领域所反映出的特殊的社会问题,进一步深化了人们对闲暇本质的认识.     

Does Institutional Theory Need Redirecting?

Greenwood, Hinings and Whetten (2014) present two major criticisms of current institutional scholarship, and see need for a broad redirection: institutional organization theory, they argue, has lost sight of the claim to study organizations and, with its overwhelming focus on isomorphism and similarity, has fallen short on adequately theorizing differences across organizations. In our article, we offer support as well as a riposte. First, while we agree that the organizing of collective efforts needs to be at the core of organization research, we warn that focusing on formal organization – a rationalized cultural product itself – may direct attention away from studying alternative modes of organizing, and underestimates the dynamic developments that have transformed contemporary organizations into increasingly complex objects of inquiry. Second, we are concerned that, by abandoning the analysis of similarities in favour of differences, institutional theory may eventually lose sight of its pivotal quest: to study institutions.     

STRATEGIC CONSEQUENCES OF EXECUTIVE SUCCESSION WITHIN DIVERSIFIED FIRMS

Systematic investigation of leaders and their influence on organizations has been a major area of research interest. In examining the upper echelon-organizational outcome linkage, researchers have come to focus on the issue of executive succession. This focus has been due in large part to an emerging theoretical perspective that managerial differences may explain much of the variance in organizational outcomes. The purpose of this study is to ascertain whether or not top management succession affects subsequent corporate strategy. This article extends previous research efforts by longitudinally examining the linkage between executive succession and the extent of corporate strategic change across a sample of Fortune 1000 diversified firms. The findings confirm that the nature of executive succession has substantial consequences for corporate strategy. Firms have a greater likelihood of experiencing significant changes in strategy when they choose successors from outside the organization; firms that select their key executives by promoting from within are more likely to experience significantly less change in their corporate strategy. The results of this longitudinal investigation of the strategic outcomes of succession have significant implications for those in a position to select successors to the executive ranks.     

产权性质、货币薪资公平与企业绩效 ——基于2010—2014年A股上市公司的经验数据

根据计薪原理将货币薪资公平分为企业货币薪资公平、高管货币薪资公平和员工货币薪资公平三类,基于2010—2014年我国A股上市公司的经验数据,对我国企业的产权性质、货币薪资公平与企业绩效三者之间的关系进行实证研究,结果表明：企业货币薪资公平和普通员工货币薪资公平均对企业绩效有着显著影响。在不同产权性质下,企业货币薪资公平、高管货币薪资公平、普通员工货币薪资公平对企业绩效的影响不一样。地方政府控制和非政府控制的企业的货币薪资公平对企业绩效有着显著影响,中央政府控制的企业的高管货币薪资公平对企业绩效有着显著影响,且无论是中央政府、地方政府还是非政府控制的企业,普通员工货币薪资公平对企业绩效都有着显著影响。     

Strategic operations management decisions and professional performance in U.S. HMOs

Professional service organizations are becoming an increasingly important segment of the service sector in the U.S. but little attention has been paid to the management of these organizations, particularly in relation to technical performance. This paper reports the findings of a survey of managers of Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs) which related operations management decisions about organization, workforce management, quality management and planning and control, to clinical process and outcome performance.This research demonstrates that managerial decisions do affect clinical performance in HMOs. These findings have implications for both researchers and practitioners. For researchers, the study provides a framework for future research on the important link between management decisions and technical performance in professional service organizations. For practitioners, this study suggests that technical performance will be enhanced when professional work is appropriately managed.     

Government instruments to support the commercialization of university research: Lessons from Canada

Increased efforts are made in most industrialized countries to promote the commercialization of university research, for instance, through spin-off firm formation. Many studies have investigated the initiatives set up in the university sector that aim to support and facilitate the commercialization of research, such as technology transfer offices (TTO). However, few studies have looked at the increasing number of instruments introduced from the government. This paper reviews the Canadian support structure at federal level that aims to support the commercialization of publicly funded research. Two types of programs can be identified. Firstly, programs made to induce structural reforms within the university sector in order to improve the institutional capabilities to facilitate commercialization projects. Secondly, programs providing support to specific commercialization projects. This paper explores how these types of programs are operated at government level. An example of implementation at university level is also given. The lessons to be learned from the Canadian case are related to how the government initiatives encourage a bottom-up approach. This is accomplished by providing resources for direct use in commercialization projects or to develop professional expertise in technology transfer in the university sector, by experimenting with new initiatives, and finally by facilitating cooperation between commercializing organizations.     

Return on Marketing–Eine Bestandsaufnahme empirischer Befunde

Difficult economic situations and the corresponding share price drops have increased the pressure on all functions within an organization to provide evidence how effectively they are contributing to a company’s financial performance in the sense of the shareholder value concept. Especially the marketing department quite frequently is on the watch due to its rarely manifest direct impact on firm success. Hence, for several years the topic ‘Return on Marketing’ has been ranging on top of the research priority lists of the leading scientific marketing organizations. Consequently, a variety of scholarly publications has analyzed the impact of marketing by means of capital market based approaches. Recently, finance methods seem to become a gold-standard in marketing research. In the present paper current empirical studies are systematically identified and analyzed in order to provide a detailed overview of this research topic. Furthermore a discussion and reflection of the findings with regard to communalities, divergences and applied research methodologies used is provided. The paper concludes by revealing (methodological) limitations and provides directions for further research.     

Debugging the system: the impact of dispersion on the identity of software team members

This paper looks at the impact of dispersion of groups of software workers on team and organizational identification. The paper examines at two case studies of software organizations operating in Scotland. One case study is drawn from a software division of a large national telecommunications company, the other from a medium-sized indigenous software firm. Within each organization we examined groups of employees based within and outwith their employing organizations. Our results were broadly consistent with established work within other sectors in finding that the team largely replaced the organization as a focus for identification. However, we also found that there was no difference in the salience of organizational identification between dispersed employees and those based within their employing organization. For many employees the focus on the team as opposed to the organization was a way of reducing subjective uncertainty within a changing corporate environment. Finally, we established that it is team identification rather than organizational identification for software workers that is a greater determinant of affective outcomes such as job satisfaction. The results of this study impact upon contemporary theories of HRM, which promote the design of work systems in order to engender commitment to, and identification with, the organization.     

The relationship between HRM practices and service behaviour in South African service organizations

This paper reports on findings from research conducted in South African service organizations that frontline employees' perceptions of HRM practices have a direct influence on their service behaviour. Specific HRM practices have more impact than others and this was attributed to the influence of external factors such as the socio-political situation and national culture and to internal factors linked to the way managers implemented the HRM practices in the organization. Organizational commitment was found to play a mediating role in the relationship between frontline employees' perceptions of HRM and their service behaviour.     

Innovative human resource management and corporate performance in the context of economic liberalization in India

The Indian economy was forced to adopt a structural adjustment programme at the beginning of 1991. The structural adjustment programme or liberalization initiated the process of the opening up of an otherwise closed economy of India. Liberalization created a hyper-competitive environment and to respond to this turbulence, Indian organizations adopted innovative changes in their HRM practices. Current research shows that HRM practices are important for enhanced corporate performance but little has been reported on the effect of HRM practices and corporate performance in the context of economic liberalization of India. This study tries to understand the role of innovative HRM practices and specifically questions how HRM practices, such as the role of HR department, recruitment, retraining and redeployment, performance appraisal and compensation, enhance corporate performance during the change process. A multiple-respondent survey of 69 Indian organizations was undertaken to study the impact of innovative HRM practices on firm performance. The survey found that the innovative recruitment and compensation practices have a positive significant relationship with firm performance. It was observed that recruitment, the role of the HR department and compensation practices seem to be significantly changing within the Indian firms in the context of India's economic liberalization. The synergy between innovative HRM practices was not significant in enhancing corporate performance during the liberalization process.     

Relational exchange in nonprofits: The role of identity saliency and relationship satisfaction

In practice and research pertaining to charitable giving, the emphasis has been on identifying the characteristics and motivations of donors, but few have asked why donors continue to support a particular nonprofit. This study examines the relationship between renewing donors and nonprofits and their impact on charitable giving levels using identity salience and relationship satisfaction as key mediators of nonprofit relational exchange. In a survey of 719 repeat donors in the United States, to a broad range of nonprofit organizations, identity saliency and relationship satisfaction are introduced as mediating constructs, and the results confirm that both constructs partially guide donor motivations and charitable giving. Theoretically, this suggests that the more a donor identifies with a nonprofit organization and the more satisfied the donor is in the relationship with the organization, the higher their intention to donate. This finding supports previous research in segmentation strategies and service‐dominant logic in the nonprofit sector. Managerial implications of this research include indication of a paradigmatic shift from relational exchange to transformational exchange (or value cocreation) in nonprofit organizations' approach to donor cultivation.     

Compensation as a signal of organizational culture: the effects of advertising individual or collective incentives

Beyond their impact on current employees, compensation systems are thought to convey important messages about an organization's values and practices to potential hires, but explicit empirical support for this belief is scant. In two experiments, US participants evaluated recruiting advertisements containing simple statements about bonuses, with performance basis manipulated between-subjects in the first experiment and within-subjects in the second. Advertising bonuses based on individual performance caused an organization to be perceived as likely to have a more individualist culture, whereas bonuses based on team or organizational performance led to perceptions of a more collectivist culture. When participants in the second study were asked to choose between hypothetical jobs at organizations with different advertised compensation systems, the relation between individual differences and job preference was contingent on their organizational culture perceptions. In contrast to previous research, no modal preference for individual over collective rewards was observed.     

A preliminary framework for studying mergers of public organizations.

In times of fiscal retrenchment, it is often necessary for two or more public organizations to merge. Not surprisingly, this need is not often met favorably by the organizations involved. This paper discusses reasons why such a response might not be unreasonable if one objectively views the pressures acting upon the organization, as well as strategies which representatives of society could use to make, merger a more desirable option for the public organization. It is generally suggested herein that the best actions include rather subtle efforts on the part of society and the targeting of smaller, less prestigious public organizations.     

Designing high commitment — high performance organizations

In this paper the author suggests a number of reasons why in recent years there appears to have been a shift in thinking away from traditional bureaucratic-scientific forms of organization to alternative types of organizational design. In most cases, that thinking has yet to be translated into practial action. Experiments in organizational design are taking place but progress appears to be hindered by the lack of a sufficiently well understood design theory, a clearly existing model to emulate, and not least by a failure to know how we get from “where we are” to “where we want to be”. The author describes some of the basic characteristics of what have been called “high commitment—high performance” organizations, and concludes by offering a step-model towards the creation of such an organization.