In the present frame, marked by economic crisis, globalization of competition, the quality of products and services is the reference point of any organization. Continuous improvement of product quality and service has become new references in the current economic landscape, highly complex...

This paper aims to address issues of importance of investments on the quality of products and services in the contemporary economy. The investments have an innovative character due the fact that creates material conditions in order to promote the technology, ensuring the development and...

Despite the fact that vertical integration has been a key question of management studies for more than fifty years, we still do not have a unified, coherent view of outsourcing. In particular, multiple theoretical perspectives such as transaction cost economics, industrial organization, and...

This paper presents a model that determines the optimal budget allocation strategy for the development of new technologies for safety-critical systems over multiple decision periods. The case of the development of a hypersonic passenger airplane is used as an illustration. The model takes into...

This paper analyzes the sources of quality of a pharmaceutical product. After identifying eight quality dimensions, a framework of hypothetical sources that contribute the most to shape those dimensions is established. The framework, based on Garvin’s pioneering work, is applied to case...

Distinguimos entre educación para la calidad y entrenamiento para la calidad. A través de la educación, aprendemos la ‘filosofía’ de la calidad; a través del entrenamiento, aprendemos sus herramientas. Así, el aprendizaje es un concepto central de este artículo. Pero no es el único....

La cultura es la suma de los comportamientos atribuidos al ser humano más los objetos materiales que forman parte integral de estos comportamientos. Si limitamos el concepto al mundo de las empresas, hablamos hoy de la “cultura corporativa”, es decir, del dominio del “cómo hacemos las...

Describimos y fundamentamos la tendencia creciente a utilizar medidas no financieras para la medición del rendimiento empresarial (business performance measurement), así como una axonomía de estas medidas y el impacto del movimiento de la calidad total en las prácticas de medición. Las...

This paper analyses the integration process that firms follow to implement Supply Chain Management (SCM). This study has been inspired in the integration model proposed by Stevens (1989). He suggests that companies internally integrate first and then extend integration to other supply chain...