Corporate Performance and Total Quality
Management
Abstract
Total quality management, which is the
practice of striving for customer satisfaction by ensuring quality from all
departments in an organization deals mainly with top management commitments and
employees involvement. Top management trying to make the employees part of the
processes and getting them involved in the quality programme to achieve
customer satisfaction. This work tries to find out if total quality management
improves organizations performance and also to know how organization perceives
total quality management as a management strategy. In finding out the answers
to the above, the researcher used simple percentages and chi square in
analyzing the questionnaires given, it was found out that through the
implementation of total quality management in an organization its performance
will be highly improved in that TQM involves the involvement of all the members
of an organization working towards a definite aim and it will in no doubt
improve the organizations performance. To that effect the research recommends
that to improve corporate performance through the implementation of TQM, that
delegation of power and authority to influence the way in which training
provision is organized and facilitated. This will encourage employees to set
their own quality goals which will be easily attainable.
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Experience has shown that consumers of
goods and services are becoming more sensitive to product quality more than
before and as a result, producers cannot afford to take for granted the issue of
quality which itself is a function of good performance. Corporations produced
to sell and make maximum profit irrespective of consumers taste and style. For
instance, bank consumer expects efficient, quick and courteous service from his
banker and readers of newspaper anticipates clarity of production, grammatical
soundness and dept. of news coverage from the editor. Likewise consumer of
manufacturing products expects high reliability and effectiveness of the
products manufactured from that industry.
It is therefore not enough to meet specification, but also meet all the
quality the customer expects from the product. In this context therefore,
quality means “Total or Complete quality”. That is a customer is able to get
the right quality and quantity of goods and services at the right time. All
these should be achieved at first attempt and not when patronage is repeated on
several occasions. Total Quality Management according to Nwachukwu C.C. (2006)
are set of principles and practices whose core idea include understanding
customer needs, doing things right the first time and striving for continuous
improvement. It is a management approach which is aimed at incorporating awareness
of quality in all organizational processes.
Many organization are striving for quality products and services that
will meet or exceed customers expectations and as a result of this, they are
searching for approaches to manage people and production system that will
assure that transformation of inputs into quality output.
In comparing the performance of public
and private enterprise, there exists a general understanding that public
enterprise in both developed and developing countries have performed below
expectation it has been argued that excessive political interference and
bureaucratic failure are responsible mainly for the inefficiency associated
with public sector. To salvage this, the privatizations and commercialization
exercises come into being. Hence poor performance resulting in the inability to
perform, failure to meet customer expectation and inability to meet target
result, shareholders demand and there social responsibilities. They can be
readily discovered using various operational techniques especially as it
relates to the various inputs into the production.
So in achieving greater performance, the
concept of Total Quality Management is the tool since Total Quality Management
involves people and system working harmoniously for the benefit of the
customers, the achievement of corporate goals and enhancement of workers quality
of life. But Hills (2003) on the other
hand emphasizes that if there is lack of commitment from top management then
TQM cannot be implemented in its entirely and also stress the fact that the
support that management takes in implementing a total quality environment is
very critical to the success of the Total Quality Management Implement.
1.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Total Quality Management is a management
approach which is aimed at incorporating awareness of quality in all organizational
processes. Many organization are striving for quality products and services
that will meet or exceed customers expectation and as a result of this they are
searching for approaches to managing people and production system that will
assure the transformation of inputs into quality output.
Much research has been done with regards
to the implementation of total quality management. Pheng and Jasmine (2004)
pointed out that with the adoption of TQM there is the benefits of higher
customer satisfaction, better quality products and higher market shares.
Customer satisfaction is one of the prime objectives of TQM and it is the most
widely discussed approach to directing organizational efforts towards the goal
of customer satisfaction. According to Hills (1991) TQM theory is based on:
continuous improvement, top management leadership and commitment to the goal of
customer satisfaction, employee empowerment and customer focus. With
the full adoption and implementation of TQM, there should be a turn around in
corporate culture and management approaches as compared to the traditional way
of management in which the top management giving orders and employees merely
obeying them. TQM is generally perceived
to emphasize employee empowerment and de-emphasize states distinction in an
organization. An TQM organization is basically a customer
oriented organization and the organization should strive to maximize customer
satisfaction rather than internal efficiency and that each person within the
organization should consider the need of the next person in line who uses its
output. The quality scholars have
indicated that primarily the employees build quality into an organization’s
goods and services. Hence the quality of products and services depends heavily
on employee empowerment, participation, morale, motivation, compensation. It is
believed that motivational theories when properly developed cause quality
initiatives to be successful. While others do not. Some of the motivational
theories in context are content theory, Expectancy theory, Behaviour
modification theory, Goal Setting
theory, Equity theory and job Design theory. The researcher shall devote
the cause of this research work on Goal Setting and Expectancy theory because
if properly developed, are most likely to bring success to quality
initiatives.
GOAL SETTING THEORY: The theory was
proposed by psychologist Edwin Locke, he says that the natural human
inclination to set and strive for goal is useful only if the individual both
understand and accepts a particular goal. He further states that individuals
are motivated when he behave in ways that move them to certain clear goals that
they accept and can reasonably expect to attain. Stoner (2007) describes Goals Setting as a
process theory of motivation that focus on the process of setting goals. C. Earley and C. Shalley (2000) as edited by
Stoner (2007) describes the goal setting process in terms of four phases of a
person’s reasoning.
1. Establishment
of a standard to be attained.
2. Evaluation
of whether the standard can be achieved
3. Evaluation
of whether the standard matches personal goals
4. The
standard is accepted, the goal is thereby set and behaviour proceeds towards
the goal.
Edwin Lock also proposed that intention
to work towards a goal are a major source of work motivation. That is, goal
tell an employee what needs to be done and how much efforts will need to be
done and how much efforts will need to be expended. We can also easily say that
specific goals increase performance; that difficult goals when accepted result
in higher performance than easy goals. Goal
commitment is most likely to occur when goals are made public, when the
employee has an internal locus of control, and when the goals are self-set
rather than assigned. It is also
believed that goals seem to have a more substantial effect on performance when
tasks are simple rather than complex, well learned rather than novel.
EXPECTANCY THEORY: This was propounded
by Victor Vroom. Expectancy theory argue that the strength of a tendency to act
in a certain way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be
followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the
individual.
Stonner (2007) States that it is a
theory of motivation that says that people choose how to behave from among
alternative course of behaviour based on their expectation of what there is to
gain from each behaviour. The strength of a tendency to act in certain way
depends in the strength of an expectation that an act will be followed by a
given outcome and on the attractiveness of the outcome to the individual. Robbins
S. and Sanghi S. (2008) says that employee will be motivated to exert a high
level of effort when they believe that effort will lead to a good performance
appraisal; that a good appraisal will lead to organizational reward such as a
bonus, a salary increase or a promotion and that the reward will satisfy the
employees personal goals and on the organizational side will bring for a better
corporate performance by the employee.
David Nadler and Edward Lawler describe
four assumption about behaviour in organization as edited by Stonner (2007) on
which expectancy approach is based.
1. Behaviour is determined by a
combination of factors in the individual and factors in the environment
2. Individuals make conscious decisions
about their behaviour in the organization.
3. Individual have different needs,
desire and goals.
4. Individual decide between alternative
behaviours on the basis of their expectations that a given behaviour will lead
to a desired outcome.
1.3 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The statement of problems in this study
is to describe the processes involved in the implementation of Total Quality
Management in an organization.
This study will also investigation if
Total Quality Management improves organizational performance. This study will also investigate if
organization that have implemented Total Quality Management involves itself in
continuous improvement of her products on the basis of understanding customer
needs and wants. From this research
investigation, some suggestion will be made on how to improve Total Quality
application in some business organization.
Corporate Performance and Total Quality Management
NB: The Complete Masters Project Topics in Business Administration Thesis is well written and ready to use.