Geerten van de Kaa wins best dissertation award Quality Management 2010


Dr. Geerten van de Kaa has won the Research Award Quality Management 2010, organized by the Dutch Network for Quality Management (NNK). The award has been handed over during the Business Improvement Event on June 4th in Amersfoort. Van de Kaa defended his <link erim doctoral_programme _blank>dissertation last year at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He now works at Delft University of Technology as an assistant professor at the faculty of Technology, Policy and Management, section Technology, Strategy, and Entrepreneurship.

With this research prize, the NNK wants to stimulate new, valuable impulses for the quality management discipline. Submissions were judged on the groundbreaking character of the research; on added value for the quality management discipline, applicability of the results and social relevance.

The jury report emphasizes both scientific rigour and business relevance of Geerten’s study. Quality experts tend to focus on ‘doing everything good’ but Geerten’s research provides guidance in ‘doing the right things’.

In his PhD dissertation entitled “Standards Battles for Complex Systems; Empirical Research on the Home Network”, Geerten van de Kaa argues that if companies would work together, and ensure to develop standards, more companies will benefit eventually. Indeed, the market support will be bigger as more markets can be combined in a large network. In his dissertation, he develops a framework which will enable companies to explain and predict the outcome of such standards battles. By developing this framework for standard dominance and applying it to three historical case studies, Van de Kaa composed a checklist for developing a company strategy for standards battles. This checklist consists of 29 factors divided in 5 categories. The factors have been weighted by leading experts.

“However”, Van de Kaa emphasizes, “standards should not be too “standard”, and a certain flexibility must be maintained. “When a standard is more flexible, the network of actors that support the standard can become more diverse and vice versa. As a consequence, the dominance of the standard itself increases.”

The only other nominated PhD study was Dr. Ir. Robert van Wessel’s dissertation “Realizing Business benefits from Company IT Standardization”. Robert defended his PhD at Tilburg University and works currently at RSM’s chair of standardisation. Henk de Vries, associate professor of standardisation at RSM, was co-promoter of both winning PhD candidates.

NNK, Netherlands Network for Quality Management is a society of professionals in the area of quality management with corporate as well as individual members. NNK’s mission includes the exchange of experience and the development and diffusion of knowledge in the area of quality management. NNK supports the Dutch Academy for Quality, the Dutch counterpart of the International Academy for Quality, a selective group of researchers and professionals in the quality management field. The Research Award is a common activity of NNK and DAQ.

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<link erim doctoral_programme _blank>PhD Defense Geerten van der Kaa
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