Åsa Rönnbäck, Affiliated researcher

Förbättringsakademin (2018-present).
Co-owner, researcher, lecturer and consultant at Förbättringsakademin. The purpose of
Förbättringsakademin is to contribute to practical use of research in Quality Management.
This includes e.g. giving presentations at conferences, writing academic and popularacademic
papers, guest-lecturing at universities, supervising master students in their master
theses, advising research managers and quality managers and training practitioners and
students in Quality Management and Organizational Excellence.

SIQ – Swedish Institute for Quality (2012-2018).
Research and Development Manager. The position included responsibility of R&D at the
national research institute of Quality Management, including: initiating and designing needsbased
research, gaining research funding, managing the interactive research projects and
disseminating the results from the projects. It also included responsibility of developing
products, services and processes at the institute to be research-based, for example SIQ
Managementmodell, SIQ Management Index and SIQ Kvalitetskulturindex. The work
comprehended leading three networks that were established during my time at SIQ:
• SQMA – Swedish Quality Management Academy, which is a national research
platform/network consisting of nine universities that conduct research in Quality
Management;
• Excellence Center, which is a network consisting of practitioners/organizations that
participate in research projects and share best practice among them;
• Public transportation network, which is a network consisting of public transport
authorities and transport companies that together develop and share best practice of
Quality Management in public procurement and during the contract period.

I was also responsible for the national award Kvalitetsutmärkelsen Bättre Skola (Quality
Award “Better School”) in 2012-2013. Moreover, the work also comprehended teaching,
managing seminars/workshops and training programs in Quality Management and
Organizational Excellence.

RISE – Research Institutes of Sweden (2010-2012).
Senior Researcher. The position included conducting needs-based research in the area of
Quality Management and Digitalization to develop the knowledge of how to integrate the two
disciplines.

Chalmers University of Technology, Värmlandstrafik AB (2006-2010).
Industrial PhD Student/Action researcher. The role of industrial PhD student included
conducting needs-based research in the public transportation industry. As an action researcher
the assignment was to develop an integrated management system at the public transport
authority (Värmlandstrafik) together with the private transport companies for the co-creation
of value for their common customers, i.e. the passengers. The research studies were designed
to support this aim.

I am a researcher (PhD), lecturer and advisor in Quality Management. I conduct research that
contributes both to practical and theoretical benefits, mainly using an interactive research
approach. The research I have performed (2006-2018) can be categorized into the two fields:
Quality Management and Organizational Excellence. I want to continue theoretical and
practical development in these two research streams. The reason for this interest is that I want
to help organizations to become better.

Some of my contributions to the two research streams have so far focused on the effects of
different Quality Management initiatives through interactive research, such as co-creation of
value in outsourced service provision, quality in public procurement, value-based Quality
Management programs and quality culture. The last ten years I have focused much of my
research on Organizational Excellence; developing the national excellence model “SIQ
Managementmodell” to become research-based and conducting research to contribute to this
aim. Excellence models were initially established in the 80s and beginning of the 90s, as well
as other Quality Management standards and models. There is a need to develop these models,
and research as such, to better incorporate the challenges of contemporary organizations, such
as co-creation with customers, digitalization, incremental and radical innovations,
sustainability and value-creating processes.