TQM Theory and Process

TQM Theory and Process

TQM Theory and Process

Introduction

It is no exaggeration to say that TQM has acquired the status of a paradigm in management thinking in the 1990s. Virtually all sectors of the economy including manufacturing, service, education, health care, and government all over the world are getting increasingly enamoured with the TQM concept. TQM has been variously described as something akin to “evangelical fundamentalism”, as “the most frequently repeated mantra among managers and executives in contemporary organizations”, as a new way of thinking about the management of organizations, as an alternative to management by control, and finally, as a paradigm shift.

Japan established the Deming Prize in 1951. The US seems to have taken up the quality cause with a vengeance since the late 1980s as if to atone for its initial sluggishness. Evidence of this enthusiasm can be seen in such national initiatives as the institution of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1987. The award, named for the late US Secretary of Commerce, has been conferred on such companies as Motorola, Federal Express, Xerox Business Products and Systems Group, General Motors Cadillac Division, and the Wallace company. It continues to be the most prestigious and sought-after distinction, as attested to by the number of requests for applications, which registered a dramatic increase from 12,000 in 1988 to 51,000 in 1989, to 180,000 in 1990. Similar national initiatives can be seen in other industrialized and developing countries(Ernst 1992).

Quality certainly seems to mean different things to different people depending on their expectations and background. Conformance to specifications, conformance to requirements, fitness for use, value, loss avoidance, and meeting and/or exceeding customers' expectations are some of the many definitions proposed in the literature. Garvin, discusses eight dimensions of quality including: performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality.

If quality is such a slippery construct, not surprisingly, TQM seems to be a close cousin. Definitions and descriptions of TQM abound in the literature and probably there are as many of them as the number of authors or the number of organizations that have implemented it. One can get some sense of this ambiguity by looking at the emphasis of TQM, which seems to vary depending on the author: it could be process control and process variation reduction using a set of principles; a trilogy consisting of planning, control, and improvement; zero defects, customer orientation, integration of functional activities, prevention of defects through systematic analysis. Dean and Bowen aptly describe the total quality movement as “a sort of Rorschach test, to which people's reactions vary as a function of their own beliefs and experiences” (Lawler 1992).

It can be seen at once that the deluge of implementation and exhortation on TQM without much thought to the building of a sound theoretical foundation has led to a state of confusion, ambiguity, and uncertainty. Our choice of the word Jungle in the title is intended to reflect this state of disarray in TQM and is inspired by Koontz's classic article ...