Everard van Kemenade

ABOUT THE PRESENTATION
Soft skills for TQM in higher education standards and the Quality Change Agent
The aim of this paper is to explore if higher education considers soft skills to be important for their students and if so which skills are needed. In total quality management it became clear that its hard side of measuring and data analysis can only be successful if it is replenished with the soft side, the people side. This has serious consequences for the education of professionals. Professionals, especially in higher education should be trained in soft skills, trained in managing themselves and their relations with others. In this study first a definition of soft skills is provided with a list of 20 examples out of the literature on this field. These are used to match with the standards for higher education programs from ABET, AACSB, EQUIS, AMBA, AUN and the Dublin descriptors. An analysis is made which of these skills are required in these accreditations and which are lacking.
It is clear that the soft skills are most recognised by two of the accreditation standards in the area of business management programs (EQUIS, AMBA for MBA and MBM). In technical education they seems less important (ABET). For higher education in general the Dublin descriptors see far little necessity for soft skills than the AUN guidelines.  The AUN-QA guidelines are advanced in prescribing eight skills for all professions. This can be caused by cultural influences. Dahlgaard (1999) states that: “the long history of Japan shows that they have had an extraordinary capability to import foreign elements, whether it is a system, a language, techniques, a philosophy or whatever”.  This surely goes for the development of quality management. The same capability might be available in other Asian countries and visible now in what they want graduates to be able to.
When we look at the whole picture, communication is covered by seven out of the nine criteria. However, still nine of the twenty skills mentioned in the quality management literature are not mentioned in any of the standards:  3 personal and 6 interpersonal skills. For some, the reason for this absence can be that it is questioned if these skills can be trained at all in a higher education context. Handling emotions or establishing relationships might require psychotherapy-like sessions not fit for education. Some skills might be too difficult to assess. How can you measure a persons liability or his commitment to the organisation? On the other hand skills like inspiring people, sharing visions, mediation, coaching, and negotiation can be trained and assessed and still are lacking in the criteria. Training for Quality Change Agents is needed. A profile of this function is presented.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Everard van Kemenade was quality manager in Higher education for many years. He has written a great amount of articles in magazines like TQM Magazine, International Journal for Quality and Reliability Management, Quality Progress and several chapters and books on Quality Management. He took his PhD. at Erasmus University (Rotterdam School of Management). The thesis was about the effect of accreditation on the professional in higher educational institutes.
He is member of the Dutch Academy for Quality and chairman of the Education & Training Activities Group from the European Organisation for Quality (EOQ).
Now he works for MeduProf-S, empowered by Fontys University of Applied Sciences, as quality manager and consultant/trainer in quality management in emerging countries and countries in transition. He executed projects on the implementation of Quality Management in universities and hospitals all over the world like in VietNam, Rumania, Czech Republic, Syria, Yemen, Egypt and Ghana.
One of his lessons learned is, that quality is personal and that quality management has more to do with people than with systems. His motto is: ‘Because excellence in the end is a personal journey’.