Authors of the literature on total quality management (TQM) have been much more concerned with process than content. This article considers TQM in relation to firm orientation and identifies market advantage, product design efficiency, process efficiency, and product reliability as the key feature of its content. Performance expectations for TQM. In the form of Increased revenues, reduced costs, and their time lags, are addressed in the context of environmental uncertainty.

Beyond Process: TQM Content and Firm Performance

No matter how much effort is placed into producing quality service, the true test lies in the perception of customers. To assess this perception, lodging executives have only a few quantitative instruments available from which to choose, since the development of such scales is still in its infancy. This study takes the reader through the step‐by‐step development of a reliable and valid quantitative measuring tool that lodging practitioners can implement to measure their customers’ perception of delivered quality. The procedures followed begin with the same original dimensions that were used to develop SERVQUAL. The resulting lodging quality index (LQI) emphasizes five clearly defined dimensions of service quality.

Lodging quality index (LQI): assessing customers’ perceptions of quality delivery

This article develops reliability as a measure of information system s(IS) success based on the critical success factors (CSF). This paper constructs the hierarchical configuration of CSFs using Rockart's data on CSFs of IS executives, and checks the applicability of this configuration by using Martin's data. The article then derives IS reliability from the CSF configuration.

Reliability is a quantifiable measure used in in the control and management of IS. It provides an early warning about the quality of the IS, and identifies the areas where the trouble lies. Reliability can be used to compare various information systems, and as the numerical example in this article demonstrates, this measure could be used extensively in cost/benefit analyses of computing IS investment projects.

Reliability of information systems based on the critical success factors - formulation

How firm innovativeness and unexpected product reliability failures affect profitability

This thesis explores the dynamics of a reliable project management capability responsible for undefined projects, and proposes new factors that could influence how project management maturity is determined and modeled. It demonstrates that unique processes and practices—that are not tightly controlled, repeatable and predictable—can contribute to the reliable management of e-Learning projects in a university environment.
A multimethod research design is used with two qualitative methods: textual (document) analysis of industry and organizational maturity models, and a case study of two university offices responsible for e-Learning projects. Model analysis reveals factors used for maturity assessment that are not dependent on process control (for example, culture, customer involvement and values). The output is a conceptual framework reflecting these factors, along with instructional design processes and other properties indicating reliability. Data are collected using this instrument and analyzed to test the validity of its components.
Results indicate multiple processes and practices that enable this project management capability in ways that do not fit the current view of project management maturity. Context-specific values and policies, specialized bodies of knowledge (instructional design), customer involvement, third-party influence, and tacit factors such as trust, morale and creativity. A clear path emerges of an alternative route to project management maturity.
This inquiry underscores the value in questioning a strict definition of 'maturity‘ that relies on the key principle of process control. It challenges the prescriptive orientation of the current generation of project management maturity models that codify (thereby legitimizing) certain processes and practices, leaving little room to appreciate unexpected phenomena that might also be contributing. Further research can build on the typological framework offered here to critically examine other project types with undefined, even contradictory or changeable requirements that require flexible project management capabilities without sacrificing their reliability. Exploration of these environments will create a more inclusive definition of project management maturity, and expand the conditions that lead to 'mature‘ project management capabilities.
This research contributes to this exploration by offering new and specific factors integral to the reliable project management capability associated with managing an e-Learning project, and challenges researchers and practitioners to identify others.

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Gordon Rupert Gedye

Papers

A manager's guide to quality and reliability