Innovation capability and its role in enhancing the relationship between TQM practices and innovation performance

Innovation plays a critical role in predicting the long-term survival of organizations, determining an organization’s success and sustaining its global competitiveness, especially in an environment where technologies, competitive position and customer demands can change almost overnight, and where the life-cycle of products and services are becoming shorter.Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to extend the existing knowledge as to the relationship between TQM practices and innovation performance by exploring the expected role of innovation capability as mediator to enhance this relationship.At the same time, this study attempted to shed a light on how to improve innovation performance of manufacturing companies in Malaysia.The gained results indicated that innovation capability mediates the relationship between TQM practices and innovation performance. More importantly, this study supports the findings of the past studies that questioned the role of TQM practices in improving innovation performance. Finally, in light of the obtained results, several recommendations were introduced to assist decision makers in manufacturing companies

Electrospinning of hydrogels for biomedical applications

The field of biomedical applications for hydrogels requires the development of nanostructures with specific controlled diameter and mechanical properties. Nanofibers are ideally candidates for these advanced requirements, and one of the easiest techniques that can produce one-dimensional nanostructured materials in fibrous form is the electrospinning. This technique provides extremely thin fibres with controlled diameter, highly porous microstructure with interconnected pores; extremely versatile allowing the use of various polymers for tailoring various applications requirements and it is a simple cost-effective method on preparation of scaffolds. In this section, we will discuss recent and specific applications with a focus on their mechanisms. As such, we conclude this section with a discussion on perspectives and future possibilities on this field.ye

Internal and external drivers for quality certification in the service industry: Do they have different impacts on success?

This paper presents the results of a study of hotels that are certified for quality management to identify the reasons for seeking quality certification. The authors analyse whether internal or external drivers for seeking certification have different impacts on benefits and the use of quality tools in the hotel industry. The analysis groups hotels according to the importance of their internal reasons for certification, and uses cluster analysis to identify the significant differences between groups of hotels. The findings for the 32 hotels analysed show that hotels that pursued certification for internal reasons develop better quality tools and have increased levels of benefit