Competitive advantage through quality management in Universities - Essay Example

It is clear that no institution can possibly have infinite resources, and this is the context in which management becomes relevant and important. Especially, in the case of a university, which is viewed by our contemporary society as a non-profitable platform to impart knowledge to the upcoming generation, the resources can even become sparse. Yet when it comes to educating our future generation, the limitation of resources cannot be an excuse for lower quality. At any cost, a society needs to develop its youth so that the nation can progress and ensure the well-being of the people.

In this backdrop, an educational institution like a university has to become immensely resourceful on how to put to optimum use its available resources. Yet another benefit of quality management, which is equally important, is that it the present scenario, any organization needs to be competitive to survive and be successful, and ensuring quality can guarantee this requirement. Daunoriene (2011) has identified the key benefits of quality management as “increasing profit, reducing costs and developing competitive advantage” (p.717). Though this essay is focusing on the importance of quality management to “developing competitive advantage” alone, it can be seen that cost reduction and enhancing income will also eventually add up as essential ingredients of “competitive advantage” (Daunoriene, 2011, p.717). .

Though this essay is focusing on the importance of quality management to “developing competitive advantage” alone, it can be seen that cost reduction and enhancing income will also eventually add up as essential ingredients of “competitive advantage” (Daunoriene, 2011, p.717). It has already been made clear that for a university, quality management is synonymous with knowledge management and the management of knowledge creation. This will involve a maximum and effective utilization of infrastructural resources as well as “intellectual resources” (Ahmadi, 2012, p.691). Here, knowledge is defined as “a combination of data and information to which the expert opinion, skills and experiences are added to help make correct decisions” (Ahmadi, 2012, p.695). Ahmadi (2012) has listed the various elements of knowledge management as “customer orientation, organizational learning, promote corporate culture, leadership and smart decisions, redesigning processes, generating new knowledge, converting tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge, and attention to the knowledge of people and the elite” (p.691). Keeping in view these specific elements, it has to be examined how they can contribute to competitive advantage.

The four steps involved in this could be “identification and production of knowledge, storage and coding knowledge, knowledge dissemination and publication, and utilization of knowledge and getting feedback” (Ahmadi, 2012, p.692). These steps can also be converted into a six-stages process in which the stages are “knowledge identification, knowledge acquisition, knowledge development, knowledge sharing and distribution, operation and maintenance of knowledge, and using knowledge” (Ahmadi, 2012, p.692).