Susan Whittle

Strategies for Managing the TQ Agenda

Reports the findings of a research project into the development of a total quality methodology for strategic use by senior management teams aimed at enabling them to audit current approaches, revise where necessary, and then implement in order to produce TQM programmes which are resilient in the medium/long term. Recounts the empirical and theoretical work underpinning a partially inductively derived map of approaches to TQM, comprising four TQM paradigms which are postulated to be the product of managerial mindsets and which result in predominant and implicit TQM cultures in management teams. Explores the role of TQM in strategic cultural change. Finally details the development of a methodology (TQM2) based on the research findings.

The Quality Management Maze

Reviews the strengths and weaknesses of quality control, quality assurance, total quality control and total quality management and shows how you can choose the quality management style which best fits your organisation′s needs. Compares approaches to quality management and articulates the differences between total quality management and the rest of the field. Argues that the choice of QM should fit an organization′s business strategy. Contends quality is a strategic issue, central to which is the management of change, which requires a diagnosis of where the organization is now. Suggests managers should look at what competitive advantage a particular approach will deliver for their organization and not at what has been delivered to other organizations.

Spirals of change

Considers the requirements for making organisational change. Contends that those companies that have made the transition have done so by changing the way in which management thinks. Goes on to detail one of the most prevalent assumptions in manufacturing management, the service factory, and ways in which thinking around this concept can be changed for the benefit of manufacturing strategy.

Customer Profiling: Getting into your Customer’s Shoes

The authors have constructed a model which breaks down customer contact in consuming a service into six steps: search, arrival, pre‐contact, contact, withdrawal, follow‐up. They argue that this “journey” should be mapped out by service organisations and the key points carefully managed.

Regenerating Your TQM Effort: What to Do When It Runs out of Steam

Total quality (TQ) is likely to fail or run out of steam 18‐24 months into the endeavour and this cycle is likely to repeat itself as the programme progresses. Discusses why this occurs and describes a methodology of resuscitating the total quality management (TQM) programme. This involves, in addition to the traditional approaches to TQ (planning, learning and visionary mindsets) introduction of the transformation mindset.

Quality ‐ It′s all in the Mindset

Explains how companies such as Milliken, have turned their minds to quality. Discusses how the inability to change basic assumptions guiding a company, helps explain why so many quality initiatives fail. Asserts the mindset challenge is to shift the focus of change from the manipulation of systems and structures to seeing the world from the customer′s perspective, and implementing programmes to meet these new requirements. Describes one organization that is meeting the challenge and how the company has changed. Concludes that everyone working for the company understands that their success in business depends on totally satisfying the customers.

TQM2 – the methodology: an approach to breathing new life into your TQ effort

Companies which seem to have succeeded in complementing TQ programmes over time appear to be those which have acquired the capability to change direction frequently. Argues that the choice managers make about which direction they take depends on the particular mindset they use. Describes research which highlighted four different quality mindsets. Most TQ approaches can be placed in one of these. Concludes that those senior managers of companies who were seen as leaders in quality appear to have frequently reformed the way they think. This results in changes of direction in their approach to quality.

Implementing Total Quality: Erecting Tents or Building Palaces

This paper argues that there is wide spread agreement amongst practitioners and researchers in the field of TQ that its implementation is fundamentally a process of culture change. It goes on to suggest that many of the problems companies are experiencing in implementing TQ are due to the models they are using to make sense of organisational culture and as a consequence how it might be changed. On the basis of a number of case studies researching how organisations have approached TQ implementation four generic models are identified viz. Total Institution, Adaptive/Survival, Learning Organisation, and Transformational/Dialectic. Initial findings indicate that companies tend to start adopting those models which are most compatible with their existing organisational culture and later may move on to other models when they discover the inherent limitations contained in any of them. It is suggested that this process is inevitable in culture change - there can be no one best method.

Improving the service quality chain

Describes a research study implementing TQM in the employment services using it on an organisation‐wide basis, for internal as well as external customers. Suggests a customer profile model. Asserts that the implementation has produced astonishing results and that, by recognising service providers as experts with intimate knowledge of their customers, TQM enables them to contribute directly to the improvement of the quality of their service provision.