Total Quality Management in the African business community of Burkina Faso: a change in perspective on knowledge development

During the 1990s Total Quality Management (TQM) became diffused to Burkina Faso. The overarching logic of privatization due to Structural Adjustment Programs prepared the ground for far-reaching changes in management practices. TQM became exhorted as a new way of manufacturing. This new management concept was presented as a crucial part of new corporate success and put strong emphasis on empowerment of employers, customer service and charismatic leadership. Interviews with top and middle management in a range of Burkinabé companies showed a willingness for mimetic learning but it turned out that translating the concept into specific new practices by way of new routines remained a complex matter. Although this management concept sometimes became part of the dispositional practice of managers ? a new habitus ? company practices could be better characterized as improvisation on quality improvement.

Samen managen met beelden:het ontwikkelen van een model

The central theme of this thesis is of the development of a management model in which images play a central role. Two questions will be examined. The first question is: what forms do images take? The second question is: what role do images play in cooperation

Evaluer des études de gestion des entreprises: combiner des éléments principales avec des éléments pratiques

Evaluer la recherche de gestion demande une combinaison des critères classiques et des critères pratiques. Par cette combinaison il est possible de trouver une réponse cerrecte concernant la validité et l'effet de la recherche. Dans cet article nous allons décrire comment une combinaison des questions pratiques avec et questions théorique

From Family Based to Industrial Based Production: Local Economic Development Initiatives and the HELIX Model

To build a strong local economy, good practice tells us that each community should undertake a collaborative, strategically planned process to understand and then act upon its own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. From this perspective we start with the local communities but how is this related to the perspective from the Helix model in which three actors are explicitly introduced: the Government, the Industry and the Universities? The purpose of local economic development (LED) is to build up the economic capacity of a local area to improve its economic future and the quality of life for all. To support the Local Economic Development in remote areas, a program has been developed based on the LED frame work of the world bank. This approach and the experiences over the past years with this program are described in the first part. In the second part of the paper, We analyse work done with that program with the help of the social capital concept and the triple helix model. In all cases it is important to pay attention to who is taken the initiative after the first move (and it is not always the governance as actor) and for the triple helix we suggest that the concepts of (national) Government, Industry and University need a translation to Local Governance Agency, Cooperation or other ways of cooperation of local communities and Local Universities. Although a push from outside might help a local region in development the endogenous factors are also needed