Innovation and Quality Management:
Constraint to Creativity or Framework for Progress?

Honorary Chairman: Professor Mohammad Zairi

It is with great pleasure for the fourth consecutive year we invite you to join us and about 700 fellows at the Scientific Quality Congress of the Middle East, QC4, in Dubai. At this year’s QC4 Annual Conference you can look forward to the best quality management thinking from a broad range of fields and to interact directly with experts from around the world.

The Congress is coordinated and organized by the e-School of Business & Quality Management at HBM e University, MEQA, M O T, University of California (UC) Berkeley, and under the technical lead of the Scientific Research Deanship in the HBM e-University. QC4 partnerships are composed of International Institutes from all around the Arab World and beyond.

We're anticipating about 800 attendees from more than 35 countries globally. This is truly an international event. Some congress participants will share their innovative ideas; others will come to learn new skills and hear about new opportunities; and still others want to explore the diversity of viewpoints to be found at QC4.

In addition to Opening plenary presentations and welcoming receptions, the congress will comprise: special event sessions on the most significant issues of quality management; meet-the-author events where you can interact personally with authors of your favorite quality-management books; and two full days of groundbreaking presentations, interactive workshops, and roundtable discussions.

More than 100 experts will address the QC4 main theme. As in previous years, we will bring together prominent worldwide thinkers to propose and discuss hypotheses and theoretical models pertinent to the main focus of the Congress, challenge significant conceptual frameworks found in the literature, reflect on the conclusions of advanced unpublished studies, and stimulate thinking and direction for further research.

The main theme of QC4 is Innovation and Quality Management: Constraint to Creativity or Framework for Progress? This theme was adopted to advance the findings of the Congress of last year, QC3, 2009 and to inspire further questions that will increase our understanding of quality practices in an innovative world and provide additional theoretical and practical applications. The main areas of focus include:

1. Quality Framework and the Specific Context of an Organization: the Specifications of Improvement- Success Factors
2. Evaluation and Quality Assurance in Education Engineered by Information and Communication Technologies
3. TQM in Knowledge Intensive Organizations: does TQM Hinder Innovation?
4. TQM Procedures and Measures: Reliability and Validity Issues
5. Cost of Quality: Benefits and Risks
6. Limitations of Data-Driven Organization Reform
7. Leadership Commitment to Innovation: Leadership Styles and Organizational Culture Congruence with Innovation
8. The Driving Forces of Change; Organization Transformation at Macro and Micro levels
9. Compatible Change Model: the learning Organization
10. Innovation and Human Resources: Unleashing Employee Creativity and Potential

Even if you are unable to attend the conference, you can experience it via a full-conference live broadcasting and / or via audio CD sent just two weeks after the conference closes. Your CD will include audio recordings of all sessions plus PowerPoint slides and handouts as PDF files. Order now at the special preconference price of 750 DHS.

It gives us great pleasure at HBMeU to welcome researchers, practitioners and academics to present their research findings, case studies and conceptual advances in areas of work where Theory, Practice, Technology and Quality interconnect.