Article Abstract:
A proposed system-structural model of quality management is used to show the influence of organizational quality context on managers' perceptions of ideal and actual management processes based on the leadership of top management, quality department's functions, process management, training, design of products or services, quality information and reporting, dependability of suppliers, and employee relations. Among the contextual variables found to be significant to quality management are quality performance of the past, managerial training, and company-supported quality efforts, and the range of demands of external quality. Data was sampled from 152 managers from 20 manufacturing and service companies. Renewed importance is placed on the quality context in an organization's quality management processes by this study, but further work is necessary to verify this quality management model.
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Article Abstract:
People examine probabilities in decision analysis by evoking and applying pertinent information on events of interest. To improve evocation and develop prescriptive tools for knowledge elicitation, a study provided an empirical test of the evocative knowledge map technology. This research also led to a new prescriptive elicitation technique which employs a theoretically-based set of directed questions to enable decisionmakers to evoke information for probability assessment. Findings revealed that both the knowledge map and the new directed questions methodology produced a higher quantity and quality of information from decisionmakers performing probability assessment tasks when compared to control conditions. Moreover, the two techniques elicited information that was qualitative different.
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Article Abstract:
Frequently, decision makers do not have the information they require in order to make informed decisions. A method for identifying functions that are consistent with the incomplete information available in such situations is discussed. The method, the Holistic Orthogonal Parameter Incomplete Estimation (HOPIE), may be used in either descriptive or prescriptive ways. HOPIE is based on assessments of hypothetically proposed alternatives, presented within a factorial framework. These alternatives may then be judged in order to arrive at decisions, but such judgments require the assignment of the alternatives to an interval scale.
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