Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss/reflect on some well‐known excellence frameworks or models in order to understand the development in the contents of excellence during the last 25 years and to understand the problems or limitations which such kind of models still...

Purpose – An overall aim with a new human‐oriented TQM metrology is to help managers in giving answers to the questions of what to measure, how to measure and why? It is the purpose of this paper to give input to answering these questions. In doing so the measurement problems are to be...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to review and identify the dominating paradigms within management control theories in order to investigate adoptability of the European excellence model (EEM) as an alternative management control model or a framework. Design/methodology/approach – The...

Purpose – Recently, the operations management academic literature has seen articles focusing on the transfer of “lean” thinking or kaizen concept from the private to the public sector. In Spain, during the last 15 years, some local councils have also followed similar improvement...

Purpose – Parallel with increasing awareness of importance in learning during the last few decades, numerous theorists from various disciplines have tried to shape ideas concerning learning seen from their perspectives. One negative consequence of these efforts has been observed as increased...

Purpose – The authors analyze the principles and results of lean production and compare the lean production philosophy with the six sigma quality process and the principles of total quality management (TQM). At the end of the paper, it is discussed how to build the necessary company culture...

A review is made of corporate practices in reporting performance so as to extract elements for constructing a productivity calculus for reflecting corporate performance. A communications strategy reflecting critical value‐added productivity changes is then explained. We propose...

Purpose – To highlight to CEOs/corporate community the emergence and rapidly rising phenomenon: e‐photography as part of corporate communication. In the process, the paper provides concepts, models, tools and techniques in coping with this fast developing, global trend....

Purpose – The paper aims to present and interpret excellence through the parchments of the ancient Hellenic philosophy and the different schools of management thought and its application in the university context. Design/methodology/approach – The approach taken in the paper is theoretical...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to trace the development of economic theory to the point where “economic rationalism” is a commonly used term. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on earlier research and published works examining: the history of economics; economic...