Sangeeta Sahney

An integrated framework of indices for quality management in education: a faculty perspective

Purpose – Education is becoming much more of a “product” with varying customers and stakeholders. There are huge pressures to become more accountable and responsive to customer needs, and educational institutions need to become more efficient, effective and customer‐centric. Quality is fast emerging as a theme that is rapidly spreading within the higher education institutions. However, the emphasis has been essentially an external customers perspective, i.e. an employer or a student perspective. The internal customers perspective has generally been ignored. This study aims to examine facultys, i.e. an internal customers, perspective about quality systems in higher education.Design/methodology/approach – The study undertaken is exploratory and diagnostic in nature, aimed at identifying the set of minimum design characteristics/quality components that would meet the requirements of the faculty. An extensive literature review led to identification of variables that were pilot tested for validity and reli...

Quality framework in education through application of interpretive structural modeling

Purpose – The Indian higher educational system is one of the largest in the world. Besides, the growth of students and universities, the range of disciplines and universities in professional and vocational education has greatly increased. With the sudden immense growth of the educational institutes all over the country, educational institutions must improve the quality of their services to compete and achieve a leading position. Orientation towards quality and competitiveness in higher education in India has thus started gaining the attention of the policy makers, educational planners, and administrators as also the various stakeholders of the educational system. With the internal and external stakeholders becoming more demanding in a gradually liberalizing Indian economy, the issues related to quality need to be addressed from varying perspectives on the very conceptualization, implementation, and assessment. Starting with a theoretical background, the purpose of this paper is to present the results of a...

Developing a scale to measure students’ perception of service quality in the Indian context

Purpose – The changes in social and cultural framework, and even more in the economic order, have pushed the education system and higher education in particular, into a new environment in which quality plays an important role. Thus, the purpose of the current study is to develop a multidimensional scale to measure service quality in higher education in the Indian context.Design/methodology/approach – The study, descriptive, diagnostic, and causal in nature, has been conducted on students of higher education, particularly technical education in India. A questionnaire consisting of 26 items was developed to measure the service quality construct and its dimensions. Construct validation using exploratory factor analysis showed an interpretable latent structure consisting of seven dimensions.Findings – It was observed that service quality in higher education setting comprises seven dimensions viz., input quality, curriculum, academic facilities, industry interaction, interaction quality, support facilities and...

Conceptualizing service quality in higher education

Purpose – In a pursuit of excellence, it is increasingly important to identify customer values and demands. Service quality has been identified as one such demand. The purpose of this paper is to develop the model for service quality in higher education.Design/methodology/approach – The proposed model is based on a current conceptualization of service quality, which suggests that service quality is a multidimensional and hierarchical construct.Findings – In the proposed model, service quality consists of two primary dimensions which are defined by several corresponding sub‐dimensions: program quality: curriculum, industry interaction, input quality, academic facilities; and quality of life: non‐academic processes, support facilities, campus and interaction quality.Originality/value – The paper has value for the institutes seeking to improve the quality of services they provide.

Organizational sociotechnical diagnosis of managerial retention in an IT organization

Purpose – Turnover of managerial employees at junior and middle levels has been widely recognized as a critical organizational concern. The problem happens to be more intensified for organizations belonging to the service sector as the services provided to client/customer groups get directly affected. A number of studies have shown that compensation factor alone does not explain the retention of managerial employees in the organization. This paper aims to focus on designing and balancing the organizational social and technical subsystems elements in order to moderate the turnover of junior and middle level managers in the company.Design/methodology/approach – A number of selective junior and middle level managers were interviewed in‐depth and content analysis was made for categorization of level‐wise qualitative responses. The situation actor process‐learning action performance (SAP‐LAP) framework has been adopted as the diagnostic instrument of organizational analysis.Findings – The findings from the pap...

Delighting customers of management education in India: a student perspective, part II

Purpose – Educational institutions must delight their customers and provide quality of services so as to be competitive and achieve a leading position. The paper aims to present the results of an empirical study conducted on students of select management institutes in India with a focus on their orientation as a customer to the quality paradigm. The study is an attempt towards the integration of multiple methodologies so as to be able to identify customer requirements and evaluate service quality; prioritize improvement of service; and guide and develop educational services by incorporating the voice of the customer.Design/methodology/approach – The study was conducted across three phases. In the first phase, service quality was determined through the application of the SERVQUAL; in the second phase, the Kano model was applied; and, in the final phase, the QFD was applied. This paper, which forms the first part, is restricted to the application and findings of the first phase of the study, namely identifi...

Designing quality for the higher educational system

Purpose – The growing popularity of quality management has left no sector untouched, and educational services are no exception. In the face of the innumerable demands that the stakeholders place, educational institutions like other organizations are realizing the significance of customer‐centered philosophies. The enhancement of quality and the attempt to define, conceptualize, implement and measure it are areas of focus, and are being addressed by policy makers, educational planners and administrators. This paper is an attempt towards identification of the elements that would help design quality for the higher educational system.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a theoretical foundation, this paper is an empirical study conducted on select higher educational institutions to identify the various design characteristic constructs which would form the quality element/components for an educational system, and which, if implemented, would help design quality in education. The literature review helped conc...

Understanding consumer’s showrooming behaviour: Extending the theory of planned behaviour

Purpose Recent multichannel research suggests that consumers use multiple channels to reap attribute-based benefits which have led to showrooming phenomenon. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the reasons for consumers’ showrooming behaviour and propose a comprehensive model based on application and extension of the “Theory of planned behaviour”. Design/methodology/approach Using the probability sampling approach, 278 complete responses were obtained via web-based surveys for analysing the showrooming behaviour. The research model was tested using the “Partial least squares method” which follows a variance-based structural equation modelling approach. Findings The results of the study indicate that “touching and feeling the product” and “sales staff assistance” motivated customers to visit the physical store before buying online. “Better online service quality” and “lower prices online” induced customers to later purchase online. Price conscious customers and those with the ability to use multiple channels were more likely to engage in showrooming behaviour. Research limitations/implications The generalization of the findings may be limited because the data were collected from a small sample size. The subject calls for more extensive research for drawing generalizations due to lack of the substantive literature on the core area of study. Practical implications The model proposed will help retailers in understanding the showrooming phenomenon which recent researchers have considered as a threat to retail. The study provides basis for devising strategies to defend showrooming customers. Originality/value This paper adds to the body of knowledge in retailing by proposing a model on showrooming which is an emerging area of research in the present retail landscape.

Understanding Twitter as an e-WOM

Purpose – This paper aims to research as to how Twitter is influential as an electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) communication tool and thereby affecting movie market. In present days, social media is playing an important role in connecting people around the globe. The technology has provided a platform in the social media space for people to share their experiences through text, photos and videos. Twitter is one such online social networking media that enables its users to send and read text-based messages of up to 140 characters, known as “tweets”. Twitter has nearly 200 million users and billions of such tweets are generated by users every other day. Social media micro-blogging broadcasting networks such as Twitter are transforming the way e-WOM is disseminated and consumed in the digital world. Twitter social behaviour for the Hollywood movies has been assessed across seven countries to validate the two basic blocks of the honeycomb model – sharing and conversation. Twitter behaviour was studied for 27 m...

School leadership and its impact on student achievement: The mediating role of school climate and teacher job satisfaction

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of teacher job satisfaction and school climate in mediating the relative effects of principals’ instructional and transformational leadership practices on student outcomes. Design/methodology/approach – Guided by strong evidence from theories on school leadership and work psychology, the authors hypothesized relations among dimensions of principals’ instructional and transformational leadership behaviors, teachers’ perception of the school climate (social and affective, and physical environment), their job satisfaction and student achievement. The benefits of the principal’s leadership behaviors for student achievement are primarily hypothesized as indirect, with either a weak or statistically non-significant direct positive effect on student outcomes. Path modeling was applied to validate a mediated-effects model using cross-sectional survey data (306 principals, 1,539 teachers) obtained from 306 secondary schools in the two Indian metropolitan c...