Joao S. Neves

The challenges of six sigma in improving service quality

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to critically evaluate the contributions of six sigma methodology to the improvement of service quality. Since its development in the late 1980s, six sigma has been extensively applied in manufacturing and quasi‐manufacturing settings. This study aims to explore the challenges of six sigma in reaching a much wider field of application.Design/methodology/approach – Utilizing the service quality framework, the authors assess the contributions of six sigma and explore its limitations when applied to services.Findings – The relentless drive toward adopting six sigma to services has led both to a limited field of applications and to unrealistic expectations as to what six sigma is truly capable of achieving, particularly in knowledge‐based environments.Research limitations/implications – This research focuses on highlighting gaps in the six sigma as applied to services; further work is necessary to identify and develop new methods and to study their effectiveness.Practica...

The valdez principles: Implications for corporate social responsibility

The Valdez Principles have been formulated to guide and evaluate corporate conduct towards the environment. While at first glance the code appears to impose enormous new responsibilities on firms, a closer analysis indicates that existing regulations and business practices already require businesses to meet many of the environmental goals sought by its proponents. Likely corporate response to the code is examined against this background and with reference to the experience with other voluntary codes of conduct. It would appear that compliance with the code will yield minimal benefits and non-compliance will impose minimum costs for the environmentally-responsible firm.

The Baldrige Award Framework for Teaching Total Quality Management.

Abstract The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award established in 1987 has undergone many revisions and has evolved into what may safely be called the American model of total quality management. Today, there is a common language, a set of core concepts, and an accepted model of one of the most important management innovations of this century. The Baldrige Award guidelines can effectively be used for teaching TQM concepts in both undergraduate and graduate level courses as well as in company-wide management training programs. This article examines the Baldrige model and how it can be used to teach TQM effectively.

Six Sigma for services: a service quality framework

Six Sigma is an effective quality improvement methodology that has been applied numerous times in the service industry. Alas, most of the successful applications reported in the literature focus on manufacturing-like settings, i.e. highly repetitive services with low behaviour and psychological components. This suggests that either Six Sigma is not effective in many service settings, or that other methodologies provide better results. This paper reviews the literature on Six Sigma service applications and analyses the research findings on service quality. Services have specific characteristics which warrant a differentiated approach; applying the Six Sigma tools used in manufacturing to services will not produce optimal results. We propose a Six Sigma methodology that is based on a broad understanding of customer satisfaction and on the five gaps of the service quality model. The quality function deployment model and the define measure analyse improve control process are adapted to better suit the specific nature of services.

Searching for Pareto-Optimal Settlements in Negotiations: The Extreme Payoffs Method

Decision-making analysts are generally familiar with the maximin and minimax criteria used in the selection of alternative courses of action when payoffs depend on different states of nature. This paper applies these criteria to the collaborative negotiation problem in which two parties negotiate the resolution of several issues each with defined payoffs, and where the alternative choices for each party are qualitative attributes or non-differentiable variables. The proposed method assumes that the negotiators do not know each other’s payoffs and are generally unwilling to disclose information about their preferences. The search procedure for Pareto-optimal settlements and the role of the mediator in assisting the parties to achieve an improved negotiated agreement are analyzed and illustrated through an example.

Complying with voluntary codes of conduct: Corporate strategies for the Valdez Principles

The Valdez Principles is the latest of a series of voluntary codes of conduct that have been enunciated by various advocacy groups to guide the behavior of business enterprises. These principles provide guidelines on corporate conduct towards the environment and present a corporation with critical choices. This study suggests alternative strategies that firms may adopt to cope with this new code. Experience with the Sullivan and MacBride Principles is analyzed to serve as the basis to predict corporate response to the Valdez Principles.

Negotiation Strategies under Sigmoid Preferences

The diminishing returns concept undergirds many economic theories and has led to the common assumption of concave preferences in the negotiation literature. Realizing that in practice negotiating parties are often confronted with very steep disagreements, negotiation researchers have investigated the impact of convex preferences on compromise and logrolling bargaining strategies. This article extends the previous work to the case of sigmoid preferences and examines the resulting possible shapes of the efficient frontier curve in two-party multi-issue negotiations. The implications for compromise and logrolling negotiation strategies are discussed.