Trends in quality management research in higher education institutions

The purpose of this study is to determine the state of research in quality management in higher education institutions based on a review of the academic literature. The aim is to provide universities with the best evidence for informing their focus and models for quality improvement. Despite quality’s role growing in importance as universities strive to compete in an increasingly underfunded market for students and research funds the review shows that current research is limited in volume and scope. To ensure the widest coverage in our systematic literature review we use three databases: ScienceDirect, ABI/Inform, and Emerald. The findings show that the three most common topics are quality management implementation issues, quality management models, techniques and tools, and quality management dimensions. The key quality management enabling dimensions found are: people management, process management and information and analysis, while the results dimension is predominantly focused on an understanding of stakeholders’ requirements and feedback on their perceptions of performance. We find in this literature that students are discussed as both end customers as graduates and participants in the learning process who have views on their experience. Also provided is an analysis that shows popular journal outlets, research methodologies used and country focus. The paper concludes with recommendations for the development of quality management for universities, and a future research agenda. This article is the first literature of research in quality management in Higher Education Institutions following the model used in previous literature reviews on quality management and operations management

Dissemination and adoption of bottom-up agriculture to improve soil fertility in Africa: An interdisciplinary approach

Soil fertility is at stake at a global scale, putting pressure on food security, poverty alleviation and environmental protection, under scenarios of climate change that in most cases aggravate the threat. In sub-Saharan Africa, a combination of depleted soils and population growth adds particular pressure to smallholder farmers and society. Their capacity to innovate in a social, economic, political and cultural context is seen as decisive to reverse the trend of declining soil fertility. However, many technologies with a potential to protect, maintain and build up soil fertility are hardly used by small-scale farmers, triggering the urgent question on their reasoning not to do so. Exploring and understanding the constraints and complexity of the social systems interacting with the implied institutional dynamics are essential steps in designing appropriate agricultural innovations that are scalable and adoptable. The focus of the inter- and transdisciplinary approach applied in the project ORM4Soil (Organic Resource Management for Soil Fertility; www.orm4soil.net) lies at the heart of this project. We are combining qualitative and quantitative methods from agronomy, sociology and communication sciences in order to bring soil-fertility-enhancing-technologies and their adoption to the center of the decision-making process of farmers’ as well as local and regional institutions. At local and regional innovation platforms, stakeholders from business, government, academia and farmer organizations are discussing the outcomes of agronomic trials and sociological research. We are expecting to create bridges between the needs and concerns of farmers, relevant segments of society and policymaking, with the new common goal to enhance soil fertility

Conservation Agriculture: The role of Academia in its technology transfer

Today, almost all players in the different agricultural sectors know what Conservation Agriculture is about and the potential benefits CA is able to generate. Whereas in many parts of the world the adoption and regular practice of CA, whether continuous or rotational, has reached considerable levels both in terms of acreage and percentage of arable land (Derpsch and Friedrich, 2009) other regions lag far behind in the uptake of CA. This is certainly the case for Europe and Africa. Despite the scientific and empirical evidences generated in numerous studies and on-farm experiments showing that CA works over many agro-ecologies, it appears that something is missing to have this technology broadly accepted in these two continents. This contribution tries to identify the main reasons for the lack of adoption and to provide possible approaches to overcome the reluctance and even resistance to try or to continue the application of the principles of CA. It further attempts to give suggestions on the potential role of academia in the adoption of CA

Environmental management decision-making in certified hotels

This paper analyses environmental decision-making against two axes, motivations and decision-making processes, to understand the reasons for pro-environmental behaviour by the managements of Spanish Eco-management and Audit Scheme (EMAS)-certified hotels. Mixed methods were used to study perceptions of EMAS and reasons for being certified, with current and lapsed EMAS-certified firms triangulated against expert interviews and documentary evidence. Four groups of hotels were differentiated: Strategic hotels (22%) (with high levels of integrated environmental management), Followers (48%), Greenwashers (11%) and Laggers (19%) (with low levels of integrated environmental management). Most hotels were found to be internally driven in their purpose and ad hoc in their decision-making, with limited understanding of externally driven benefits and motivation for more systematic management systems. This questions the success of EMAS as both a continuous improvement management and as a market-based regulation tool for hotels. Few hotels overall related high environmental standards to the possibilities of gaining market advantage: most wished to avoid legal challenges. The paper also illustrates the ways in which hotels opportunistically switch certification systems to get what they see as a better deal. © 2011 Taylor & Francis

Environmental modelling of the Chief Information Officer

Since the introduction of the term in the 1980’s, the role of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) has been widely researched. Various perceptions and dimensions of the role have been explored and debated. However, the explosion in data proliferation (and the inevitable resulting information fuelled change) further complicates organisational expectations of the CIOs role. If organisations are to competitively exploit the digital trend, then those charged with recruiting and developing CIOs now need to be more effective in determining (and shaping) CIO traits and attributes, within the context of their own organisational circumstances and in line with stakeholder expectations. CIOs also need to determine their own suitability and progression within their chosen organisation if they are to remain motivated and effective. Before modelling the role of the future CIO, it is necessary to synthesise our current knowledge (and the lessons learnt) about the CIO. This paper, therefore, aims to identify and summate the spectrum of key researched ‘themes’ pertaining to the role of the CIO. Summating previous research, themes are modelled around four key CIO ‘dimensions’, namely (1) Impacting factors, (2) Controlling factors (3) Responses and (4) CIO ‘attributes’. Having modelled the CIOs current environment, and recognising the evolving IT enabled information landscape, the authors call for further research to inform the recruitment and development of the future CIO in terms of personal attributes and the measurable impact such attributes will have on their respective organisation

Recommendation domains for pond aquaculture

This publication introduces the methods and results of a research project that has developed a set of decision-support tools to identify places and sets of conditions for which a particular target aquaculture technology is considered feasible and therefore good to promote. The tools also identify the nature of constraints to aquaculture development and thereby shed light on appropriate interventions to realize the potential of the target areas. The project results will be useful for policy planners and decision makers in national, regional and local governments and development funding agencies, aquaculture extension workers in regional and local governments, and researchers in aquaculture systems and rural livelihoods. (Document contains 40 pages

Managerial Perceptions of Firms’ Corporate Sustainability Strategies: Insights from Croatia

Although corporate social responsibility (CSR) has gained increasing academic attention, we lack a solid understanding of how managerial perceptions underpin firms’ sustainability practices. This study interprets and sheds light on managers’ perceptions of sustainability activities under various stakeholder domains in Croatia through a multi-theoretical approach. Using 21 semi-structured interviews with managers, the study reveals that sustainability activities in the research context tend to focus more on environmental issues and customer service, as well as employees and supplier domains. The study further establishes three distinct levels of sustainability commitments by firms. These stages include sustainability as a minimal response, corporate culture-driven, and committed response. These findings, as a whole, are insightful and enable us to advance research on sustainability by elucidating how managerial perceptions underpin firms’ strategic sustainability activities. The contributions to theory and practice are also discussed

THE INFLUENCE OF ECO-CONTROL ON ENVIRONMENTAL AND ECONOMIC PERFORMANCE: A NATURAL RESOURCEBASED APPROACH

Alors qu'une littérature grandissante a examiné et démontré une influence directe de l'adoption des outils d'éco-contrôle sur la performance organisationnelle, peu de recherches ont tenté de comprendre la façon dont cette influence s'opérationnalise au sein des organisations. Se basant sur la Natural Resourced-Based View, l'objectif de cet article est d'ouvrir cette boite noire et d'examiner le potentiel des outils d'éco-contrôles à supporter les compétences environnementales et d'en analyser l'impact sur la performance environnementale et économique de l'organisation.Outis d'éco-contrôle, Natural resourcedbased view, compétences environnementales, systèmes de mesures de la performance environnementale, performance environnementale

ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks: a literature review

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) implementation is a complex and vibrant process, one that involves a combination of technological and organizational interactions. Often an ERP implementation project is the single largest IT project that an organization has ever launched and requires a mutual fit of system and organization. Also the concept of an ERP implementation supporting business processes across many different departments is not a generic, rigid and uniform concept and depends on variety of factors. As a result, the issues addressing the ERP implementation process have been one of the major concerns in industry. Therefore ERP implementation receives attention from practitioners and scholars and both, business as well as academic literature is abundant and not always very conclusive or coherent. However, research on ERP systems so far has been mainly focused on diffusion, use and impact issues. Less attention has been given to the methods used during the configuration and the implementation of ERP systems, even though they are commonly used in practice, they still remain largely unexplored and undocumented in Information Systems research. So, the academic relevance of this research is the contribution to the existing body of scientific knowledge. An annotated brief literature review is done in order to evaluate the current state of the existing academic literature. The purpose is to present a systematic overview of relevant ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks as a desire for achieving a better taxonomy of ERP implementation methodologies. This paper is useful to researchers who are interested in ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Results will serve as an input for a classification of the existing ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks. Also, this paper aims also at the professional ERP community involved in the process of ERP implementation by promoting a better understanding of ERP implementation methodologies and frameworks, its variety and history

A Management Maturity Model (MMM) for project-based organisational performance assessment

Common sense suggests that organisations are more likely to deliver successful projects if they have systems in place that reflect a mature project environment based on a culture of continuous improvement. This paper develops and discusses a Management Maturity Model (MMM) to assess the maturity of project management organisations through a customisable, systematic, strategic and practical methodology inspired from the seminal work of Darwin, Deming, Drucker and Daniel. The model presented is relevant to organisations, such as construction and engineering companies, that prefer to use the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK™ Guide) published by the Project Management Institute (PMI), but without the disadvantages of excessive time and cost commitments and a ‘one size fits all’ approach linked to rigid increments of maturity. It offers a game-changing advance in the application of project-based organisational performance assessment compared to existing market solutions that are unnecessarily complex. The feasibility of MMM is field-tested using a medium-sized data centre infrastructure firm in Tehran