This book responds to the challenge of providing a comprehensive account of quality systems for private sector development: what works and what doesnt on the ground, and why. This volume provides a thorough analysis of the diversity of institutions, linkages, and arrangements involved in quality systems, identifying success factors in countries quality strategies. It explains why quality and standards matter for export growth, for productivity, for industrial upgrading, and for diffusion of innovation, all central ingredients in improving economic growth and generating real gains in poverty reduction. It provides a detailed blue print for implementing effective National Quality Systems. Quality and Standards Matter is a valuable tool for policymakers confronted with the challenges of building trade competitiveness in the new global economy.

Case study research conducted in 1981 in nine US companies and seven Japanese companies.

Epilogue: Quality Control in the Twenty-First Century -- Appendix 1: Table of Factors for Quality Control Applications -- Appendix 2: Areas Under the Normal Curve- Detailed Table -- Appendix 3: Table of Random Numbers -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index

Explains how companies must pinpoint business strategies to a few critically important choices, identifying common blunders while outlining simple exercises and questions that can guide day-to-day and long-term decisions.

This book examines the ways in which quality management methods, tools, and practices help improve an organization’s performance and achieve sustainable competitive advantages. This volume includes quality techniques and tools such as the EFQM Model, SERVPERF model, E-S-Qual scale and the ISO 9001 certification and provide a wide variety of empirical studies in different economic sectors. In the current economic environment, characterized by economic turmoil and fierce competition, quality management has become a key strategy for organizations to overcome today’s challenges. Organizations benefits from implementing quality management systems by following two approaches. First, they implement quality practices aimed at ensuring customer satisfaction by considering consumer expectations and establishing strategies accordingly. Second, organizations improve processes by establishing efficient and effective process management systems that improve productivity, lower costs, reduce unnecessary expenses, eliminate all non-value added activities, and ultimately maximize excellence and customer satisfaction. Quality management thereby provides tools, techniques, and methods for continuous process improvement in both the professional and academic worlds, which, when implemented by organizations in times of crisis, enable more effective administration of activities undertaken by managers. Containing contributions from various academics and scholars, this new book provides cutting edge research, methods and techniques providing a reference manual for academics, scholars, practitioners and policy-makers.

This toolkit provides a framework, guidelines, and practical tools for conducting an analysis of a country's trade competitiveness in terms of growth and share performance, diversification, and quality.

The dissemination of the quality movement has been an unprecedented success in terms of the number of both management standards and total quality management models that have been implemented worldwide. \nTo complement these quality management systems, other related business practices have also been introduced, such as, for example, specific management systems in the fields of the environment, occupational hazards, health & safety and social responsibility. Recent trends that seem certain to continue in the near future point toward the implementation of more sectorally-focused management systems and the introduction of integrated management systems as a means of encouraging innovation, and thus of gaining in competitive advantage. \nThe long-term future of quality paradigms remains uncertain, but the impact they have had on business organizations and their contribution to improving their competitiveness are beyond dispute for both academia and business practitioners alike. \n\n