Service organisations still struggle with the adoption of a road to excellence. Evidence exists that processes and systems in service organisations are not always as advanced as in manufacturing organisations. Adding a quality smile to the face of the service provider will not solve the problems...

The aim of the research reported in this paper is to assess the relative value of the 2000 version of the ISO 9000 series of quality management system standards in comparison to the 1994 version. 773 organisations in the Netherlands which have all been certified to the ISO 9000 standard were...

The volume of temporary labour has grown very fast during the last decades in Europe, as did the number of organizations with an intermediating role in relation to temporary (contingent) labour. All over the place there are small and large intermediaries trying to find the right persons for the...

This paper will discuss the phenomenon Mystery Shopping in the field of customer satisfaction measurement techniques. By using the literature about Mystery Shopping definitions and restrictions of this instrument will be presented. Also, possible ways to present and use the gathered data will be...

This paper focuses on the analysis of empirical data on customer satisfaction and the relationship with hard organisational performance data. The organisation is a Flexcompany with its headquarters in The Netherlands, but also operating in other countries in Europe. The empirical data on...

A project has been started with the intention to develop an E-Business Research Network on E-business related research in business and management. The initiative has been taken in co-operation between Erasmus University and UMIST to develop a project in which the first stage concerns the...

Reaching service excellence through a focus on the customer, demands more than just measuring customer satisfaction by means of questionnaire surveys. Nowadays, it is not sufficient anymore to have service excellence in services, processes and relationships. Now is the time to create excellence...

The ISO 9000 experiences of the same sample of organisations over a five year time period is examined in this paper. The responses to a questionnaire sent out at the end of 1999 to companies which had a reasonably long term experience with the ISO 9000 series quality system are analysed. These...

Human resource management (HRM) does matter! Prior empirical research, summarized and classified in the work of Delery and Doty (1996), Guest (1997) and Boselie et al. (2000), suggests significant impact of HRM on the competitive advantage of organizations. The mainstream research on this topic...

A survey has been undertaken amongst students of two universities (Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and Northeastern University Boston, USA) to study what quality factors are perceived as important in relation to their use of web sites. The results of the questionnaire survey are...