Performance, Productivity and Continuous Improvement. Symposium.

N

33

Adult Education; Adult Learning; College Faculty; Comparative Analysis; Competence; Factor Analysis; Foreign Countries; Human Resources; Influences; Job Performance; Labor Force Development; Literature Reviews; Manufacturing Industry; Organizational Change; Organizational Culture; Organizational Development; Organizational Effectiveness; Performance Factors; Performance Technology; Postsecondary Education; Predictor Variables; Private Sector; Productivity; Public Agencies; Public Sector; Quality Control; Research; Research and Development; Supervisor Supervisee Relationship; Teacher Researchers; Total Quality Management

Thailand; United Kingdom; United States

This document contains four papers from a symposium on performance, productivity, and continuous improvement. "Investigating the Association between Productivity and Quality Performance in Two Manufacturing Settings" (Constantine Kontoghiorghes, Robert Gudgel) summarizes a study that identified the following quality management variables as the strongest predictors of productivity and performance: internal process satisfaction; external customer satisfaction; and consistent delivery of work output in a complete fashion. "Tri-Dimensional Social Support from Supervisor and Multilevel Performance in Government Units in Thailand" (Duchduen Bhanthumnavin) reports on a study of 355 supervisor-subordinate pairs working in health centers in Thailand. "Continuous Improvement through TQM (Total Quality Management) A Case Study in Rhetoric" (John Stuart Walton, Prabhjot Kaur Basra) discusses the relationship between TQM, organization- wide change initiatives, and continuous improvement at large organizations in the United Kingdom over a 15-year period. "An Analysis of Factors Associated with Research Productivity of Human Resource Development Faculty" (Heather A. Williams, James E. Bartlett III, Joe W. Kotrlik, Chadwick Higgins) reports on a study of the research productivity of HRD faculty that identified the following five variables as accounting for 50% of the variance in the faculty members' research productivity: teaching; research; service; administrative allocation; and amount of graduate assistant hours. All four papers contain substantial bibliographies. (MN)

2003

ED474298