here - ERIM - Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam

A validation Study of House of Quality key performance indicators
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Figure - 1 House of Quality
As showed in Figure - 1, the House of Quality is formed by a number of elements (rooms) on different
levels. The left room lists the member’s needs or requirements, the “Whats”. The room below the
roof consists of the “Hows”, the technical (design) requirements. Function of the “Hows” is to
translate the “Whats” into terms that are measurable. The body of the house presents the
correlation between the “Whats” and “Hows”. Through this correlation matrix we are able to analyze
the extent to which each “How” affects each “What”.
1.3 Problem Definition and Research Questions
Nowadays an information worker has got many technological tools available. The present study
levers IT as an enabler of work design. In the communications context and the array of tools available
for social interaction, IT tools are applied both on the co-located and remote work level. The
information environment helps workers to solve increasingly complex and ambiguous problems.
However, research that mapped information flows among executives indicated ‘that there was only
limited collaborative activity in pockets of the organization’; ‘in general this lack of collaboration was
a product of people not knowing what other people knew’ (Cross, 2001).
From an information environmental perspective ICT enables organizations to decentralize their
decision making system. By extension decentralized types of organizations provide people the
opportunity to make decisions that matter to them (Malone, 2004:6). Hence, it offers workers more
freedom in how and where to carry out their job. In spite of such promise, the new ways of working
paradigm faces a formidable challenge for organizations. Namely, they have to initiate a “change” in
the mind of the information workers, especially on how to deal with their new-found freedom on the
job.