Internal and external drivers for quality certification in the service industry: Do they have different impacts on success?

This paper presents the results of a study of hotels that are certified for quality management to identify the reasons for seeking quality certification. The authors analyse whether internal or external drivers for seeking certification have different impacts on benefits and the use of quality tools in the hotel industry. The analysis groups hotels according to the importance of their internal reasons for certification, and uses cluster analysis to identify the significant differences between groups of hotels. The findings for the 32 hotels analysed show that hotels that pursued certification for internal reasons develop better quality tools and have increased levels of benefit

Implementing the Quality Startup Management System model in Hong Kong: a case study

The innovation and technology industries have become key areas to which the HKSAR Government is committed for advanced technology development and new economic driven. In order to nurture and support local technology startups grow and flourish successfully, HKSTP had signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) to support incubation programmes through business matching and quality assurance mechanisms for startup companies. Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) was invited by HKQAA to be one of members in the advisory committee for this recognition scheme. Then, focus group was formed from different parties, including but not limited to incubatees, incubators, investors, HKSTP, HKQAA, HKSQ and other concerned stakeholders. This paper aims to introduce a systematic approach model named 'Quality Startup Management System (QStarMS) Model' through literature review and analysis, focus group and case study. QStarMS integrated Business Side of startup using Business Model Generation/Canvas (BMG/C) and Management Side under ISO 9001:2015 Quality Management System, as well as, to simplify the model to fit startups requirements and overcome their limitations. Finally, we will report the recently progress of the QStarMS implementation through HKQAA Registration - Startups scheme

Development of Co-Operation-Based Company Standards: The Case of Innovative Practice in Public Service Companies

“I don’t like standards”-we have heard this statement from all kinds of managers-experienced or beginners, domestic or multinationals, from large or small companies, production or service oriented. Much of the negative attitude that managers have towards standardization is based on their experience with ISO 9001 and the organizational work standardization and the problems with “over routined” documented quality management systems. The negative attitudes towards standards are predominantly based on the lack of understanding about how much freedom an organization has in order to find its own successful way to fulfill ISO 9001 requirements and the forced implementation of ISO 9001. The research related to ISO 9001 and other standardized implementations of management systems show that the benefits are predicated on efforts well beyond the minimum requirements of the standards (Gotzamani, 2005) and encompass other approaches, initiatives, and tools (Mijatović and Stokić, 2010). On the other side, innovation and standardization are often considered as mutually exclusive for corporate management because the remaining space for innovative work is reduced along with the progress in work standardization-many cases confirm that they are complementary to each other (Kondo, 2000)