Employee empowerment yields positive outcomes for employees, managers, and organizations. Yet, too many employees feel disempowered at work, and managers, while wanting to empower employees, often do not know how. Contributing to this state of affairs is the lack of published, high-fidelity exercises explicitly designed to instruct students on how…

Though teamwork is a mainstay of corporate America and business academia, individual assessment and compensation are problematic in disciplining and removing teammates who are free-riders and rewarding high performing team members who bear a disproportionate burden of the project. Therefore, the authors set out to develop and test an assessment…

Childcare regulations ensure children's rights to Early Childhood Care and Education settings that protect them from harm and promote their healthy development. To ensure that settings comply, power is vested with regulatory bodies that are tasked with enforcing regulations. Using a qualitative methodology, 43 interviews were undertaken with Early…

Higher education is undergoing great changes that require universities to adapt quickly, and making these changes can be difficult. One discipline that can aid in executing change is project management, which has developed a set of clear processes and strategies for completing initiatives quickly and effectively. Several authors have identified…

The article describes a project that employs problem-based learning (PBL) to teach the Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology as part of an undergraduate or graduate business course. It is scalable to a variety of course delivery and schedule formats, and uses data sets that can create distinct problem-solving scenarios for up to 16 student teams. It…

The first student Six Sigma team (activated under a QEP Process Sub-team) evaluated the course and curriculum approval process. The goal was to streamline the process and thereby shorten process cycle time and reduce confusion about how the process works. Members of this team developed flowcharts on how the process is supposed to work (by…

Background: Having an objective means of evaluating the quality of behaviour support plans (BSPs) could assist service providers and statutory authorities to monitor and improve the quality of support provided to people with intellectual disability (ID) who exhibit challenging behaviour. The Behaviour Support Plan Quality Evaluation Guide II…

The scope of institutional research (IR) undertaken in Australasian universities is progressively expanding. A traditional focus on student life cycle elements such as enrolment, retention and satisfaction has been complemented for some years now by other areas of focus including research performance and community engagement. More recently,…

While research is abundant on quality assurance in higher education, very little has been done to study informal learning in general and its relation to quality assurance in particular. Reporting on a study of informal learning among PhD students in natural sciences in an Iranian university, this article is an attempt to address this issue.…

Describes the Quality Improvement Program developed by Florida Power and Light's Nuclear Training organization that was awarded the Deming Application Prize for quality control. Training quality, team activities, training's role in business planning, customer involvement and evaluation, and continuous improvement of training are discussed. (LRW)

Discusses problems that arise when employees are asked to cooperate with each other to improve the company but are rewarded for individual performance. Offers solutions such as rewarding behaviors and offering a combination of salary plans. (JOW)

The quality movement in U.S. organizations does not have to deteriorate to a fad if there is real commitment to innovation and continuous improvement. The quality movement has the potential to enable process improvements, breakthrough thinking, and mutual accountability of individuals and teams. (SK)

District custodial costs can be cut without sacrificing quality by adopting team cleaning. A team of trained cleaning specialists performs specific tasks (dusting, vacuuming, and restroom and utility cleaning) systematically, thereby achieving total cleaning with higher productivity and quality. If internal personnel are retrained, contracting out…

Describes differences between total quality management and self-directed teams in terms of job design, decision making, flexibility, supervision, labor relations, quality, customers, and training. Offers suggestions for which method to choose when. (SK)

Examines some problems of meanings and values that can occur regarding such widely used management terms as "power,""teamwork," and "quality" from both a "moral law" and "role-theory" viewpoint. Advocates a critical-ethical alternative to narrowly economic notions of educational management.…