[AISWorld] CFP: Decision-Making Support Systems for Supporting Quality Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions (special issue in the IJDSST)

[mmora at securenym.net]

Calls for Papers (special): International Journal of Decision Support
System Technology (IJDSST)

Special Issue On: Decision-Making Support Systems for Supporting Quality
Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions

Submission Due Date: March 31, 2016 !

Submission website:
http://www.igi-global.com/submission/submit-manuscript/?jid=1120&cfcid=bc9705aa-f2e7-4baa-9dee-bde42026855a

Introduction
In the modern world of knowledge economy, the Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs) play a critical role in increasing and sustaining the
country competitiveness (Schleicher, 2006). HEIs, both public and private
ones, are also not exempt from the market forces and governmental
pressures for being more efficient and effective (CEE, 2003; Dumond &
Johnson, 2013). The general aim on high quality educational services
provision is now mandatory for any HEI around the globe.

To assess and stimulate high quality educational services in HEIs,
national and international regulator agencies have elaborated standards
and guidelines on quality of education (Doherthy, 1997; ENQA, 2005).
Consequently, HEIs are encouraged to satisfy and fulfill such expected
nationwide and international regulations. Given this situation, top
managers from HEIs face the challenge of leading their organizations
toward the achievement and compliance of such educational quality
regulations. As Tsinidou et al. (2010, pp. 227) pointed out: “Universities
have realized that their long-term survival depends on how good their
services are and that quality sets one university apart from the rest”.

HEIs, thus, are implementing Quality Management Systems (QMS) (ISO, 2005;
2007; Bae, 2007). In particular, decision making is a core activity
performed in the QMS because of the strong positive or negative
consequences from adequate or inadequate decisions made in HEIs.
Decision-making activity can be defined as the managerial process of
framing a decision-making situation, designing a decision model with a set
of courses of action and evaluation criteria, evaluating such a set
against the evaluation criteria for selecting the most adequate course of
action, and implementing it, and learning from its outcomes and its
process (Forgionne et al., 2009). Given the inherent difficulty of
carrying out a decision-making process manually, this process has been
vastly supported by special computer-based applications called
Decision-Making Support Systems (DMSS) (Mora et al., 2002). In general,
DMSS have been widely used in domains such as financial, healthcare,
military, and politics among many others (Mora et al., 2002). Furthermore,
several well-structured DMSS development methodologies and DMSS maturity
models have been reported in the literature (Mora et al., 2011; El-Gayar
et al., 2011). However, in the particular domain of QMS for HEIs, its
utilization has been scarcely reported (Mustafa & Goh, 1996; Ho et al.,
2006).

Hence, under this managerial context of HEI’s, our aim is to raise
awareness on the worldwide HEI top management community, as well as on the
value that DMSS can provide to HEIs. Simultaneously, this CFP is a call
for DMSS research community for addressing the challenges and
opportunities in the HEI QMS domain.

References
Bae, S. (2007). The relationship between ISO 9000 participation and
educational outcomes of schools. Quality Assurance in Education, 15(3),
251 – 270.
CEE (2003). Investing efficiently in education and training: an imperative
for Europe. Brussels, Belgium: Commission of the European Communities.
Doherty, G.D. (1997). Quality, standards, the consumer paradigm and
developments in higher education. Quality Assurance in Education, 5(4),
239 – 248.
Dumond, E. J., & Johnson, T. W. (2013). Managing university business
educational quality: ISO or AACSB? Quality Assurance in Education, 21(2),
127-144.
El-Gayar, O. F., Deokar, A. V., & Tao, J. (2011). DSS-CMM: A Capability
Maturity Model for DSS Development Processes. International Journal of
Decision Support System Technology (IJDSST), 3(4), 14-34
ENQA (2005). Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the
European Higher Education Area. Helsinki, Finland: European Association
for Quality Assurance in Higher Education.
Forgionne, G., Mora, M., Gupta, J. N., & Gelman, O. (2009).
Decision-Making Support Systems. In: M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.), Encyclopedia
of Information Science and Technology, Second Edition (pp. 978-984).
ISO (2005). International Standard ISO 9001 Quality Management Systems –
Requirements. Geneva, Switzerland: ISO.
ISO (2007). IWA 2 Quality management systems — Guidelines for the
application of ISO 9001:2000 in education. Geneva, Switzerland: ISO.
Mora, M., Forgionne, G. & Gupta, J. (Eds.) (2002). Decision-making support
systems: achievements, trends and challenges for the new decade. Hershey,
PA: Idea Group.
Mora, M., Wang, F., Gelman, O., & Kljajic, M. (2011). IDSSE-M: A Software
System Engineering Methodology for Developing Intelligent Decision-Making
Support Systems. International Journal of Decision Support System
Technology (IJDSST), 3(4), 55-84.
Mustafa, A., & Goh, M. (1996). Multi-criterion models for higher education
administration. Omega, 24(2), 167-178.
Schleicher, A. (2006). The economics of knowledge: Why education is key
for Europe’s success. Brussels, Belgium: The Lisbon Council.
Tsinidou, M., Gerogiannis, V., & Fitsilis, P. (2010). Evaluation of the
factors that determine quality in higher education: an empirical study.
Quality Assurance in Education, 18(3).



Objective
To collect and disseminate high quality theoretical and applied research
on contemporaneous achievements and open challenges regarding the
utilization of Decision-Making Support Systems (DMSS) (classic and modern
types) for supporting Quality Management Systems (QMS) in Higher Education
Institutions (HEIs).



Recommended Topics
Topics to be discussed in this special issue include (but are not limited
to) the following:

    Relevance of DMSS for supporting QMS of HEIs
    Typologies and Taxonomies of decision problems found in QMS of HEIs
    Survey on DMSS applications (pilot and operational ones) in QMS of HEIs
    Architectures of DMSS for supporting QMS of HEIs
    DMSS requirements engineering focused on QMS of HEIs
    DMSS design methods focused on QMS of HEIs
    Comparison of DMSS mechanisms (MAUT, AHP, TOPSIS, Fuzzy AHP, and so
forth) in the context of QMS for HEIs
    Case studies of real (pilot or operational one) DMSS applications in
QMS for HEIs
    Survey on modern DMSS applications (business intelligence and academic
analytics) in QMS for HEIs
    Review of open source technologies for implementing DMSS in QMS of HEIs
    Business analytics and strategic applications of DMSS in QMS of HEIs
    Opportunities, risks, and challenges of social media and mobile
computing and its impact on DMSS in QMS of HEIs
    Scalable cloud platform enabled DMSS for the management, storage and
distribution of digital assets and artifacts in QMS of HEIs
    Managerial and technical challenges for implementing DMSS in QMS of HEIs
    Meta-analysis and/or mixed methods studies of DMSS in QMS of HEIs



Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit papers for this
special theme issue on Decision-Making Support Systems for supporting
Quality Management Systems in Higher Education Institutions on or before
March 31, 2016. All submissions must be original and may not be under
review by another publication. INTERESTED AUTHORS SHOULD CONSULT THE
JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at
http://www.igi-global.com/Files/AuthorEditor/guidelinessubmission.pdf. All
submitted papers will be reviewed on a double-blind, peer review basis.
Papers must follow APA style for reference citations.

All submissions and inquiries should be directed to the attention of:

Dr. Manuel Mora
Guest Editor
International Journal of Decision Support System Technology (IJDSST)
email: dr.manuel.mora.uaa at gmail.com
Guest Editors
Dr. Manuel Mora, Autonomous University of Aguascalientes, Mexico
Dr. Fen Wang, Central Washington University, USA
Dr. Michael Raisinghani, Texas Woman’s University, USA
Dr. Jorge Marx Gomez, University of Oldenburg, Germany