A revised Inno-Qual performance system for higher education: the integrated applications of DEMATEL and ANP

The Taiwanese higher education system has historically been a sustainable resource, providing a competitive advantage for Taiwan. However, its performance has recently decreased relative to other countries. Improving innovation and total quality management (TQM) performance has become important to increase the competitive advantage and survival rate of universities. The Inno-Qual performance system (IQPS) is the latest model to evaluate innovation and TQM performance in Taiwanese institutions of higher education. The IQPS not only addresses major technical problems that could damage the reliability of evaluation outcomes, but it also stresses that half of the universities have not efficiently improved their innovation and TQM performance simultaneously. However, criteria and weights for innovation and TQM dimensions of the IQPS are separated to consider internal and external organizational performance independently. This results in inconsistency between the weights, resulting in lack of a clear direction for making improvements, which makes the performance evaluation results impossible to confirm. Furthermore, the innovation weights ignore the effects of the TQM dimensions due to the separation, making the system irrational and invalid in the real world. The purpose of this study is to revise the current IQPS and overcome these two drawbacks by using the decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory application and the analytic network process. With a method that is efficient, less costly, and provides verifiable results, our revised IQPS can help improve innovation and TQM performance in today's universities.