Supporting efforts to measure intellectual capital through the EFQM Model with the example of Hungarian National Quality Award winners

The bottom line of managing intellectual capital is the ability to measure its elements. Year by year intellectual capital literature and company practice line up new measuring attempts, but only some of them prove to have strong empirical evidence. Notwithstanding, several companies complete their traditional financial accountings with the evaluation of assets which are invisible in the books. First, our study introduces the main issues regarding the measurement of intellectual capital elements. Then it seeks the answer for the question how the EFQM-based self-assessment method can support an organization in its efforts to evaluate some of its intellectual capital elements

Developing a Service Quality Framework for a Special Type of Course

This paper addresses the issue of service quality measurement and evaluation in higher education and stresses the need to develop sound measures for special types of courses. During these courses students carry out project works under special circumstances and with special characteristics compared to "ordinary" courses where traditional course evaluation methods have been applied for a long time. The primary aim of the paper is to support the need to develop valid, reliable and replicable measures of service quality in case of these courses. Therefore, a questionnaire was designed for these courses to collect students' perceptions. The results are reported by using an importance-performance analysis supplemented by the draw of statistical conclusions. The presented methodology allows the identification of importance-performance gaps and supports the assessment of quality improvement programs

Listening to the Voice of Primary Stakeholders - Differences of Measuring Quality Among the Operation Levels of Higher Education Institutions

The growing number of students enrolled in higher education and of the offered courses increasingly emphasizes the need for student-focused activities. Therefore, if sufficient attention is not paid to the evaluation of educational services and to the analyses of the results obtained, the quality of higher education services provided to students as key customers becomes unmanageable. In order to gain competitive advantage in the higher education sector where increasing marketization takes place, institutions have to identify their primary stakeholders as well as their needs and expectations. However, they should not only focus on students, since there are many other stakeholder groups involved in the key processes including e.g. academic staff with whom students have direct interactions and perceive educational service quality primarily through their lecturers' activity. When examining the quality of institutional services, different levels of measurement can be distinguished to each of which primary stakeholders, customers and quality dimensions could be identified. At all three levels (including institutional, program/faculty, course level), the state of the art focuses primarily on the voice of students and lecturers. In this research, the differences and similarities between the three aforementioned levels are demonstrated from the viewpoints of students and lecturers. As a result, three groups of quality attributes are identified on which quality measurement issues should be focused at each level

Investigating Service Quality Issues in Higher Educational Context

Recently, quality issues have been widely addressed in the higher education sector as a result of which the identification and the role of stakeholders have come to the forefront. When evaluating service quality in higher education, three distinct levels of operation could be taken into account, namely, institutional level, program or faculty level and course level, on which the relevant stakeholders perceive service quality by focusing on different attributes. Besides students considered as primary stakeholders, the academic staff is paid considerable attention as they have a direct influence on how students perceive educational service quality. The establishment of a course level service quality framework of a special course is presented in this paper by demonstrating not only the students’ but also the supervisors’ aspects through a student questionnaire, focus group discussions and personal interviews. These approaches resulted in a new, more sophisticated understanding of service quality on course level

Az intellektuális tőke mérésének és értékelésének egyes kérdései

Az intellektuálistőke-elemek azonosításával, azok mérésével és értékelésével kapcsolatos kérdésekkel és a kérdések megválaszolásával foglalkozó empirikus kutatások eredményeinek bemutatásával egyre gyakrabban találkozunk a menedzsment-szakirodalomban. Az intellektuális tőke mutatószámrendszerrel történő mérésekor fellépő bizonytalanságok és torzító hatások azonosítása és elfogadása alapján olyan megközelítést kívánnak a szerzők bemutatni, amely a mérés és értékelés különválasztására épül. Kulcskérdés, hogy az intellektuális tőke a szervezet céljaihoz milyen mértékben tud hozzájárulni, azokat hogyan és milyen mértékben képes szolgálni. E hozzájárulási képesség mértékének megadása egyrészt az intellektuális tőke értékelését, másrészt a szervezet szempontjából tekintett hasznosságának meghatározását jelenti. Az intellektuális tőke mutatószámrendszerrel történő mérésekor annak különböző összetevőit más és más indikátorokkal és különböző skálákon mérik. A cikkben bemutatott értékelési eljárást minden egyes összetevőre alkalmazva olyan függvényeket kaptak a szerzők, melyek mindegyikének azonos az értékkészlete. Ez lehetővé teszi az egyes intellektuálistőke-összetevők aggregálását függetlenül attól, hogy az egyes összetevőket milyen mutatókkal és milyen skálán mérték. Megközelítésükkel hidat is kívánnak képezni a pénzügyi és nem pénzügyi értékelési módszerek között, hiszen megadják annak a lehetőségét, hogy az intellektuális tőke egyes összetevőit pénzben mérjék, majd az értéket reprezentáló pénzérték hasznosságát kifejezzék

Forecasting Failure Rates of Electronic Goods by Using Decomposition and Fuzzy Clustering of Empirical Failure Rate Curves

In this paper a novel methodology founded on the joint application of analytic decomposition of empirical failure rate time series and soft computational techniques is introduced in order to predict bathtub-shaped failure rate curves of consumer electronic goods. Empirical failure rate time series are modeled by a flexible function the parameters of which have geometric interpretations, and so the model parameters grab the characteristics of bathtub-shaped failure rate curves. The so-called typical standardized failure rate curve models, which are derived from the model functions through standardization and fuzzy clustering processes, are applied to predict failure rate curves of consumer electronics in a method that combines analytic curve fitting and soft computing techniques. The forecasting capability of the introduced method was tested on real-life data. Based on the empirical results from practical applications, the introduced method can be considered as a new, alternative reliability prediction technique the application of which can support the electronic repair service providers to plan their resources in the long run

Defining Service Quality Attributes at Different Levels of Operation in Higher Education Institutions: How Could the Service Quality Perceptions of Students Contribute to a Better Understanding of Improvement Directions?

The service quality literature focusing on higher education has been expanding rapidly parallel with the increasing marketization of the sector which poses new challenges against institutional improvement efforts and the applied management toolkit. The primary objective of our paper is to demonstrate the results of a surveying carried out in the Hungarian higher education system. The participating students evaluated the importance of quality attributes that were previously defined at the programme and the institution levels of operation and also rated the performance they had experienced along the same attributes. Both the quantitative and the qualitative results demonstrate that the student perceptions about the institutional image primarily stem from their service quality perceptions gained at the programme level defining the total student experience. Therefore, the institutional actions aiming service quality improvements should incorporate the programme level experiences of students both for enhancing total student satisfaction and institutional reputation