A little bit of history

(1) The idea of total quality management was developed inside a number of Japanese firms in the 1950s and 1960s. But it was built largely on the teaching of W. Edwards Deming and J.J. Juran, two Americans, who had quietly developed the principles in the aftermath of the Second World War. With the help of books and articles, such as David Garvin's 1983 description in the Harvard Business Review of the way in which TQM, and other techniques practiced by Japanese companies, were putting them streets ahead of their foreign competitors, the idea was later reclaimed by the United States and widely adopted by American busi­ness.

(2) Europe, which at times looked as if it was being squeezed out of this game of American-Japanese ping-pong, has also made claims to be the fount of total quality. Raymond Levy, chairman of Renault, a French car company, said in the early 1990s:

Quality is representative of a culture which we Europeans have no reason to let others monopolize. The Europe of Descartes; the Europe of the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment; the Europe of the industrial and technological revolution of the last two centuries holds within itself all the elements of method and exactitude conveyed by the term "total quality".

(3) In recent years, there has been some backlash against the implica­tions of TQM, especially in the United States. Florida Power & Light, for example, the first American company to win the Deming Prize for qual­ity management, cut its TQM program because of its employees’ complaints about the excessive amount of paperwork that it required. Douglas Aircraft, a subsidiary of McDonnell Douglas, also cut its pro­gram to next to nothing. Newsweek colorfully described the aircraft company’s action: ‘At Douglas, TQM appeared to be just one more hot­house Japanese flower never meant to grow on rocky American ground.’

►Question/Answer session:

1. What is essence of TQM? What are its strategies characterized by?

2. Is TQM applicable to any type of business? How do you see its implication in a real business setting? Is it justified? Or is it just another off-the-ground management theory?

‘THEORY-4’ POINT

MBWA

(1) This is a style of management commonly referred to as MBWA. It is var­iously lengthened to management by wandering about, or management by walking around, MBWA usually involves the following.

q Managers consistently reserving time to walk through their departments and/or to be available for impromptu discussions. (MBWA frequently goes together with an open-door management policy.)

q Individuals forming networks of acquaintances throughout their organizations.

q Lots of opportunities for chatting over coffee or lunch, or in the corridors.

q Managers getting away from their desks and starting to talk to individual employees. The idea is that they should learn about problems and concerns at first hand. At the same time they should teach employees new methods to manage particular problems. The communication goes both ways.

(2) As W. Edwards Deming, an American who introduced the idea quality management to the Japanese, put it:

If you wait for people to come to you, you’ll only get small problems. You must go and find them. The big problems are where people don’t realize they have one in the first place.

(3) The difficulty with MBWA is that (certainly at first) employees sus­pect it is an excuse for managers to spy and interfere unnecessarily. This suspicion usually falls away if the walkabouts occur regularly, and if everyone can see their benefits, MBWA has been found to be particu­larly helpful when an organization is under exceptional stress; for instance, after a significant corporate reorganization has been announced. It is no good practicing MBWA for the first time on such an occasion, however. It has to have been a regular practice before the stress arises.

Date: 2016-01-05; view: 1195