Quality Management System in Education: Application of Quality Management Models in Educational Organization—Case Study from the Slovak Republic

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear authors, 

I wish you all the best in your work.

I enjoyed reading your work, highlighting the importance of quality management (QM) in higher education in Slovakia. A strength point of your work is to bring together researchers and higher education professionals.

However, allow me to give some suggestions to improve your work.

- Abstract: 

In my opinion, the authors shouldn´t include in the abstract the benefits resulting from QM models, once in this research, the benefits were not assessed. The authors only made some reflections about potential benefits.

- Literature review

Line 56 - Is missing the quotation related to ESG 2015 

Tables 1, 2, 3, and 4 should be cited in the main text. 

Paragraph line 155 -159 it is not contextualized with previous text. I propose to move it from the introduction. 

Once the case study is explaining the implementation of a QM system, I suggest adding a topic in the Literature review about QM System implementation process (main steps/phases). 

- Research Methods and Data Sources

The paper lacks rigor methodology, there isn’t a research methodology section. I suggest adding a methodology section, with details of the steps and from who are involved, and the interactions carried out. I propose some references: Flick, U. (2002). Qualitative research-state of the art. Social science information, 41(1), 5-24.; Saunders, M. N., Lewis, P., Thornhill, A., & Bristow, A. (2015). Understanding research philosophy and approaches to theory development.

Research methodology should be presented clearly and large enough in order to understand the main purpose.

 - Case Study 

Please, try to set the main criteria to select:

 . private university and add more details about its context (internal and external); 

. Among the other QM models, why did you select ISO 9001?

.how much time passed between the implementation of ISO 9001 and the application of CAF? 

. How many and Who are the participants of the CAF survey? How did you get the data? 

It would also be important to add more details about ISO 9001 QM implemented, what are the processes and their characterization, and how many processes? Mains risks and opportunities, relevant stakeholders….. 

(….) 

- Results and discussion 

Line 318 – I didn´t find data analysis that supports the most important results enhanced by the authors. The authors need to improve this point and support their results on factual data analysis. 

In my opinion, the Discussion is little developed, I would read more about possible practical utilization of your results. 

The authors should point out the limits of the research and future research lines.

I hope to help you improve your paper so the journal can publish it.

Other than that, well done!

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we are sending you the answers to your responses.

With best wishes.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

This is an interesting paper and one that will commend itself to many readers in education. My concerns are as follows. They can be addressed without too much difficulty.

In section 2 the authors lay out the different models of management. Apart from the initial process model, the remainder are presented without any foregrounding. Yes, they are models but what is their purpose here? Are they merely to contrast the process model or are they considered preferable to (considering one of its weaknesses is opaque language) it and meant to supplant it? With the articulation of the TQM model, there is implied a preference for this over others. If this is the case it needs to be laid out more vigorously and clearly than at present.

In section 3, the case study, it would help to know why a private rather than a public institution was used. Also it would help to know if the new management model was addressing a problem or set of problems that needed handling in the organisation. This would help explain the context of the case study.

In describing the implementation in the case study it is hard for the reader to follow what it being carried out. This is in part because of the extensive use of lists used by the authors. If they were able to shape these into a narrative the reader could follow. In the presentation of the CAF model there is again an over-reliance on lists at the expense of narrative and description. It is not easy for the reader to determine how a list is implemented in practice. There is too little context.

The presentation of the results could be explained more fully. Why this particular mode? What does the figure mean? In contrasting criteria 3 and 6 which produce contradictory results, it would help the reader if we could know what was done in the implementation process to produce these results. It might not surprise me that the CAF met some resistance by faculty and staff producing lower on 3 than 6. We need more daylight here to show what happened.

The remainder of the CAF is also presented in lists. Please convert to narrative.

Section 4 the discussion is a bit thin and could dissect and discuss the results more fully. It presents a high level view, like from a helicopter, such that we don't know what is going on in the organisation. For example, who is doing what to whom?

Author Response

Dear reviewer,

we are sending you the answers to your responses.

With best wishes.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dears Authors,

In my opinion, you addressed all issues and answered clearly and totally all of them.

 I don´t have more suggestions, well done!

 I wish the best in your work ,