Assessing a quality model for the social sector: an empirical study of the EQUASS model

Abstract

It is widely recognised that there is a shortage of empirical studies on quality management about the social sector. This research contributes to address this gap by (i) empirically analysing the fitness of the model underlying European Quality in Social Services (EQUASS), a quality management and excellence programme for social services across Europe, and (ii) proposing a model with an improved fit. It uses a structural equation modelling approach on a sample of 339 external audits from 32 European organisations that were awarded an EQUASS recognition or certification between 2012 and 2015. Results reveal that the EQUASS model (2012 version) does not fit with the sample collected. An improved model with seven constructs is proposed, which shows excellent psychometric properties and good fit indexes. Leadership and result orientation play a significant role as antecedents of the orientation to persons, while staff plays a mediator role. This research provides a better understanding of the causal relationships between quality management practices embedded in the EQUASS model, as well as a simpler alternative model that is especially suited to small and medium-sized social service providers, which represent the majority of the organisations in social sector.

On the Convergence of Collaborative and Social Economy: A Quality Model for the Combined Effects

“…The most important quality model related to quality in social activities is proposed by the European Quality of Social Services (EQUASS). EQUASS aims to improve the social services sector by involving providers in quality, continuous improvement, and learning and development to guarantee service users the quality of these throughout Europe [34]. This certification was adopted by more than 650 companies in different European countries from 2012 to 2015 [35], with a satisfaction rate of around 85% among the companies that have been certified [36].…”

Avances de los investigadores españoles de Dirección de Operaciones en el año 2019: el caso de los miembros de ACEDEDOT

“…Así, había estudios enfocados a sectores tales como el académico (Iqbal et al, 2019;, la sanidad (Marimon, Gil-Doménech, et al, 2019), el desarrollo de tecnologías (Moral Ventosinos & Giménez Fernández, 2019), la defensa (Sanchez-Ruiz et al, 2019) e, incluso, los clubes deportivos . Por último, un tercer grupo de artículos estarían basados en datos multisector (Arredondo & Alfaro-Tanco, 2019;Bonavia & Advances by Spanish Operations Management researchers in 2019: the case of ACEDEDOT members Lidia Sanchez-Ruiz, Elsa Diez-Busto Marin-Garcia, 2019; Braojos et al, 2019;Malbasic & Marimon, 2019;Melão et al, 2019;Roldán Bravo et al, 2019;Sanchez-Ruiz, Blanco, & Diaz, 2019;Sánchez-Ruiz et al, 2019;Tamayo-Torres et al, 2019).…”

“…Respecto al ámbito geográfico de los estudios, una mayoría de los mismos se centran en España (González-Zapatero et al, 2019;Marimon, Gil-Doménech, et al, 2019;Roldán Bravo et al, 2019;Sanchez-Ruiz, Blanco, & Diaz, 2019;Sanchez-Ruiz, Gomez-Lopez, & Blanco Rojo, 2019). No obstante, también hay estudios en los que se analizan situaciones de otros países tales como Jordania (Al-dweeri et al, 2019), Estados Unidos (Braojos et al, 2019), Pakistán (Iqbal et al, 2019) o Croacia (Malbasic & Marimon, 2019); y otros que trabajan con muestras internacionales (varios países de un mismo o de diferentes continentes) (Arana-Solares et al, 2019;Arredondo & Alfaro-Tanco, 2019;Castello et al, 2019;Melão et al, 2019;Rincon-Ballesteros et al, 2019;Tamayo-Torres et al, 2019).…”

“…En lo que respecta a las herramientas utilizadas para la captación de datos, hay un claro predominio de la encuesta, bien presencial bien online. No obstante, también se pueden identificar otros métodos, por ejemplo, el método Delphi (Arredondo & Alfaro-Tanco, 2019), las entrevistas (Bonavia & Marin-Garcia, 2019) o, simplemente, la captación de datos a partir de bases de datos existentes (Braojos et al, 2019;Melão et al, 2019).…”

Measuring quality for human service improvement: How nonprofits meet the quality requirements of public authorities

“…Changing client needs and fiscal austerity also require appropriate actions to prevent service failures or a decline in service quality. As a consequence, there has been a significant increase in the adoption of quality models such as the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence model, the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), models based on the quality management standards set by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO 9001) or related management frameworks (Cairns, Harris, Hutchison, & Tricker, 2005; Mahmoud, Alatrash, Fuxman, Hack‐Polay, & Grigoriou, 2019; Melão, Bastida, & Marimon, 2019).…”