Glossary

The nature of an object and, at the same time, the attitude an observer takes towards it. The word goes back to the Latin “qualis”. One part of quality can be measured against standards, the other remains a subjective impression, and customers judge by cost and benefit. The thesis measures quality as the contractors of an agency perceive it.

A company-wide approach intended to raise the quality of results in every department and across the entire value added chain. The thesis distinguishes four core steps. Quality planning translates the strategy into objectives, quality control checks products and processes, quality assurance measures continuously against the objectives, and quality improvement optimizes continuously on the basis of customer feedback.

Continuous measurement of performance against set objectives, with feedback, so that errors do not arise in the first place. Control checks individual results. Assurance additionally aims at the development of the organization and at organizational learning.

The core of the DIN EN ISO 9000ff series of standards for process-oriented quality management. The series includes ISO 9000 with the terminology, ISO 9001 with requirements and certification, ISO 9004 with guidance on implementation and ISO 19011 with rules for audits. Quality here means meeting the requirements of customers and other parties involved. For agencies, the thesis considers the standard only partly suitable, because it is bureaucratic and product-related and takes soft factors into account the least. Comparison of the models: ISO 9001, TQM and EFQM.

Total Quality Management. A management method that emerged from experience in Japanese automobile manufacturing and takes the quality demands of all stakeholders into account at all levels. All employees bear responsibility for quality, and improvement never ends. The thesis considers TQM easy to adapt. However, it sets few concrete objectives, and it hardly reaches beyond company boundaries.

The business excellence model of the European Foundation for Quality Management, a further development of TQM. Enablers such as leadership, policy and strategy, employees, and partnerships and resources produce results for employees, customers and society. A learning loop feeds the experience back. The thesis sees in the EFQM the best basis for an agency model, because it emphasizes leadership and strategy, includes partners across company boundaries and pursues several objectives at the same time. The basic version, however, is kept very general and has no reference to communication.

The implementation logic of the EFQM model. Starting from the intended results, management designs an approach, implements it, assesses it and revises it continuously.

The distance between what customers expect and what they receive. Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry describe four such gaps. They lie between customer expectation and its perception by management, between this perception and the service specification, between the specification and the service actually delivered, and between the service delivered and external communication. As causes, follow-up research found above all a lack of communication and control as well as unclear or conflicting roles.

The standard model of communication controlling, developed by professional associations of controllers and of the PR industry. It assigns the impact of communication measures to four levels, input, output, outcome and outflow. The thesis mentions it as a complement to the EFQM from the perspective of controlling but does not go into it in depth.

The quality management model for the communication industry, the model of the thesis. It transfers the thought pattern of the EFQM to agencies. Four communication enablers in the agency produce communication quality, this shows itself as communication success on the contractor’s side, and a learning loop feeds experience of success back to the enablers. Unlike the EFQM, it measures financial value explicitly and lists employees only as an enabler, not at the same time as a result. In detail: QMC model.

Physical and intangible resources and concepts at the level of the agency that determine how well a communication process succeeds and thus bring about success with the addressees. The QMC model distinguishes four enablers, namely leadership efficiency, employee quality, communicational strategy and resource integration. The term “enabler” comes from the EFQM model.

A mediating latent variable in the study’s structural equation model. It arises from the interplay of the enablers and shows itself in success on the contractor’s side. In the initial model it has no indicators of its own; the study infers it from the paths from the enablers to it and from it to the success parameters. In the final model, customer trust and reputation gains are directly linked to it.

The result of professional communication on the contractor’s side. The thesis measures it in three dimensions, as customer value, social value and financial value. Of these, customer trust and reputation gains remain in the study’s final model. In detail: Communication success.

Characteristics of the agency leadership that make sensible communication decisions and careful processes possible. It was measured through democratic co-determination, charismatic behaviour and the leaders’ identification with the organization. In the final model it reaches a standardized weight of 0.98; the other enablers reach 0.14 at most. In detail: Leadership.

A psychological bond with a group that raises commitment and ties people to the common goal. Earlier research shows that the leadership’s identification carries over to the employees and improves success with customers. In the study, the indicator measures how strongly the agency leadership identifies with the organization as a whole. It is one of the three characteristics of leadership efficiency.

An agency’s ability to win its employees over to its own objectives. The study captures it through satisfaction, entrepreneurial orientation and communicative competence. In the final model it follows far behind leadership with a standardized weight of 0.14 and rests almost entirely on communicative competence. In detail: Employee quality.

Entrepreneurial behaviour of employees, in the literature also called intrapreneurship. This includes creativity and eagerness to innovate, willingness to take risks and proactivity. In marketing it counts as a success factor. In the survey, no significant influence on communication quality could be demonstrated; how the thesis interprets this is explained under Employee quality.

The conviction of being able to control events with one’s own abilities, one’s own motivation and the options for action available. The thesis takes up the term in connection with employee quality. According to the research cited, programmes that promote entrepreneurial behaviour among employees strengthen their self-efficacy.

A binding but adaptable plan for the objectives, forms, contents and processes of communication, with which an agency establishes, maintains and expands contacts. It was measured through the agency’s informational competence, customer commitment and trust, and bi-directional customer involvement. In the final model it has a standardized weight of 0.12 and is not significant. In detail: Strategy and resources.

Strategic bundling of internal and external means and competencies into a distinct profile. The study captures it through frictionless knowledge management, the use of electronic systems in supply-chain management and the involvement of customers in learning processes. In the survey it showed no significant effect and was dropped in the first amendment of the model.

A test grid of the resource-based view of firms. A resource provides an advantage if it creates value, is scarce, can hardly be imitated and cannot be replaced; the criteria are valuable, rare, inimitable and non-substitutable. The knowledge-based view regards knowledge as the most important of these resources.

Communication among consumers, oral or electronic, called word of mouth (WOM) and electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) in the specialist literature. It is regarded as more credible than advertising and has a longer-lasting effect. In the literature model it was a category of resource integration. The pre-test discarded it because the executives questioned gave it the least importance among the resource categories and assigned it rather to strategy or customer integration.

The benefit of communication as experienced by the contractor’s customers. The study measures it through the attitude, loyalty and trust of these customers. In the final model only trust remained, as a reference path with a standardized weight of 0.80.

A positive expectation regarding a business relationship. It rests on regarding the other party as credible, reliable and honest. Trust has a cognitive, an affective and a behavioural side, and it reduces complexity. In the study, customer trust was initially an indicator of customer value; in the final model it is directly linked to communication quality.

Perceived value creation beyond the material value of a product, relating to social and ecological sustainability. After the pre-test, two measurement categories remained, public interest and the gain in reputation and image. In the final model, social value shows itself only as reputation gains, with a standardized weight of 0.14.

Communication about a company’s social or ecological engagement, intended to strengthen standards and at the same time to benefit the company economically. Its effects are partly directly economic and partly pre-economic, such as gains in reputation or innovative capacity that are only later reflected financially.

The economic result of communication on the contractor’s side, measured through stock value or market value, return on equity and Tobin’s q. Unlike the EFQM, the QMC model captures it explicitly. For contractors not listed on a stock exchange, shareholder value took the place of stock value in the market value. No significant relationship between communication quality and these key figures showed up in the survey. The financial value was therefore dropped in the first amendment of the model.

The ratio of profit to the equity employed, known as return on equity (ROE). In the study, one of the three indicators of financial value.

The ratio of a company’s market capitalization to its net asset value. A value above 1 shows that the capital market credits the company with more than its assets show, for example because of a strong brand or effective communication. In the study, Tobin’s q is an indicator of financial value.

The epistemological stance of the thesis, which goes back to Bhaskar. There is an objective reality, but research always interprets it in a social and subjective context, and knowledge remains provisional. The study therefore places its quantitative findings in a qualitative context and examines its conclusions from five perspectives. In detail: Method.

Research that intervenes in the field under study and involves the participants. It goes back to Lewin, who described it as a spiral of planning, intervention, discovery and change; French and Bell conceive it as a sequence of planning, action and fact-finding. The study used it as a pre-test. Executives from two internationally active communication agencies rated each category of the literature model on a scale from 0 to 3, and six of 26 categories dropped out.

The three phases of action research. In unfreezing, a problem is brought to awareness; in changing, new patterns are developed and tested; in refreezing, they are anchored. In the pre-test, these corresponded to the presentation of the model, the interviews with a rating of each category and the determination of the new model structure.

A statistical procedure that estimates relationships between variables that cannot be measured directly by means of observable indicators, and does so for all relationships at the same time. It combines a measurement model, which links indicators and constructs, with a structural model, which connects the constructs with one another. The strength of a path can be stated as a standardized weight. It does not depend on the scale of the variables and makes paths comparable with one another. The study estimated its model with the AMOS software using the maximum likelihood method. In detail: Method.

A latent variable is a construct that cannot be observed directly, for example leadership efficiency. Indicators are the observable measures through which it is captured, in the study the ratings of individual statements in the questionnaire. The study’s initial model works with 20 indicators for seven constructs, to which the mediating communication quality is added.

Exogenous variables act as causes in the model and are not themselves explained. Endogenous variables are effects that the model explains. In the study, the four enablers are exogenous. The three success parameters and the mediating communication quality are endogenous.

A measurement model in which the indicators reflect a construct. The construct determines the responses, and it may have further components that no indicator captures. In the formative model the direction is reversed; there the indicators make up the construct. The study uses a reflective measurement model.

A procedure that tests how well previously specified indicators represent their constructs. Exploratory factor analysis looks for a structure in the data, confirmatory factor analysis tests a given one. With the CFA, the study tested the two partial models for enablers and success parameters before estimating the overall model. An exploratory analysis beforehand would possibly have grouped the indicators more efficiently. The thesis itself names this as a limitation.

Key figures that indicate how well a structural equation model fits the data or how well a construct explains its indicators.

• Chi² compares the relationships predicted by the model with the observed ones. The test reacts strongly to the size of the sample and is therefore read together with further measures.
• RMR (Root Mean Square Residual) is the mean deviation between observed and predicted relationships. A value of 0 means complete agreement.
• GFI (Goodness of Fit Index) measures the fit on a scale up to 1.
• RMSEA (Root Mean Square Error of Approximation) assesses the deviation per degree of freedom and takes the sample size into account. Values around 0.05 count as a close fit.
• SMC (Squared Multiple Correlation) indicates, for a single indicator, how well its construct explains it, on a scale from 0 to 1.