Purpose – In many industries (e.g. cars and clothing) manufacturing complexity and unpredictability have increased over the last couple of years because of an increasing variety of products and shortening product life cycles. At the same time the manufacturers in these industries appear to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the field of risk management in relation to the connection to quality management. It poses and attempts to answer three questions. What can quality teach risk management? What can risk management teach quality? What must both risk and quality...

Although total quality management might be defined as a passing fad there are three key reasons why it will remain (or return as) an important issue on the agenda for top management. First, there is growing pressure because of the use of the Internet to create excellence at the operational...

Purpose – To assess the relative value of the 2000 version of the ISO 9000 series of quality management system standards in comparison with the 1994 version. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 773 organisations in The Netherlands which have all been certified to the ISO 9000 standard...

Purpose – This paper seeks to develop insights into the charity selection criteria used by individual donors, and the information that charities provide to individual donors. Design/methodology/approach – Charities are defined as organizations involved in health, international aid,...

Purpose – This paper aims to explore the application of management control systems (MCS) to business processes when an organisation is operating in an uncertain environment. The limitations of conventional process control in this context are described, and the opportunities to exploit current...