An Inno-Qual performance system for higher education

Due to the overall decrease in quality of Taiwanese universities in recent years and the resulting drastic loss of competitive advantage against foreign countries, improving the Taiwanese university system has become an urgent issue requiring immediate attention. Evidence suggests focusing on total quality management (TQM) and that innovation is the key way to effectively upgrade the operation performance and is thus highly advised. Although there are a number of measurement models for TQM and innovation, early models evaluate the performance of each element separately, making evaluation inefficient and inappropriate for practice. There is a new measurement system, the network hierarchical feedback system (NHFS), which integrates the concept and characteristics of both elements; however, the major concern is that the NHFS does not take external organization-oriented improvement into account, such as service quality in higher education, especially in innovation orientation. Additionally, due to the above dilemmas faced by Taiwanese universities, attracting more students has now been a major priority. Thus, we argue that in order to successfully attract potential students, improving TQM and innovation cannot just focus on internal organization-oriented improvement, and we further extend the effectiveness and suitability of the NHFS to a novel and more utilizable performance measurement system, the solid Inno-Qual performance system (IQPS). A hybrid model based on a decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory, a fuzzy analytic network process (FANP), an importance-performance analysis along with in-depth interviews; a fuzzy analytic hierarchical process, and a technique for order preference according to similarity to an ideal solution were adopted to complete the construction. The IQPS is the first measurement system with the most effective characteristics of TQM and innovation embedded for both new and traditional universities of different types. It is intended to enhance and evaluate performance on both external and internal organization-oriented levels, generating synergy and performance improvement. © 2012 Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary.