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hierarchy levels so that they all can fully participate and contribute in decision-making, including planning, goal setting and monitoring of performance. Commenting on management style and successful implementation of TQM and excellence program, Kumar and Sankaran (2007) and Mosadegh Rad (2006) mentioned that differences in understanding of senior management about TQM and excellence program will raise poor coordination among them which can be observed through poor communication, in-effective meetings and leadership style thus will poorly affect on organisational quality culture. Poor coordination and communication can cause various problems and issues among senior management with respect to the quality management system of the organisation (Wosik, 2009).

Abdullah (2008) and Baidoun (2003) highlighted that senior management’s coordination can be reinforced by enhancing their quality skills and empowering them. Abdullah (2008) further stated that organisations need to realise employees’ potential and recognise their ideas and contributions but this requires fairness at the senior management level. However, poor coordination among senior management will hinder to recognise employees efforts and contributions fairly and a senior individual may focus on recognising their staff. Mosadegh (2005) further noted that teamwork and cross functional coordination among senior management, middle management and shop-floor staff is crucial from organisational view point for successful implementation of TQM related activities. Therefore training and education to enhance teamwork skills needs to be provided at all levels of hierarchy. A study carried out by Demirbag (2006) highlighted that good employee relations is one of the most critical requirement for successful implementation of quality initiatives.

2.10.8 Commitment and Participation

Porter (1998) argues that sustainable competitive advantage cannot be achieved through operational effectiveness alone. This requires each individual member of leaders which are senior management to allocate the necessary resources and to design the organisation to

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bring the intended strategies to reality. Somerville (2006, p. 169) defined a leader as "someone with the appropriate knowledge and skills to lead a group to achieve its end willingly, someone who accompanies people on a journey, guiding them to their destination", and that's what senior management requires to do. According to Dale et al. (2001), leadership and senior management commitment can be combined as they cover similar sort of concepts. Davies et al. (2001, p. 1025-1030) observed that there are different definitions of leadership including:

 The leader has the ability to influence a group of individuals towards the achievement of a particular goal;

 Leadership is about coping with complexity;

 Leadership is about coping with change.

On reviewing the literature with respect to understanding the factors affecting implementation of excellence at a senior management level, the researcher came across an agreement between the researchers on the point that ‘lack of leadership commitment and their attitude towards quality and visible participation for quality culture change’ creates major hindrance for implementation of the excellence model (Beer, 2003; Besterfield, 2011; Dahlgaard and Kanji, 1995; Davies, 2008; Deming, 1986; Hanson, 2003; Hussain, 1998; Juran, 2010; Mann, 2010; Mary and Harrington, 2002; Moosa, 2010; Sila and Ebrahimpouri, 2003; Soltani, Lai and Gharneh, 2005; Taylor and Wright (2003); Wali, Deshmukh and Gupta (2003). Evan and Lindsay (2005) highlighted that most corporate quality failures rest with leadership as every individual plays a critical role. They further mentioned that strong leadership is absolutely necessary to develop and sustain a total quality (TQ) culture. Gallear and Ghobadian (2004) pointed out that organisational culture is essential for successful implementation of TQM and therefore the role of senior management is crucial in establishing a TQM culture. DQA criteria book (2013, p-41) defines the organisational culture as, "the specific collection of values and norms that are shared by people and groups in an organisation that control the way they interact with each other and with stakeholders outside the organisation". Gallear and Ghobadian (2004) further emphasized that senior management commitment and visible participation are crucial for establishing specific

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shared values and way of working which promote TQM culture across all levels of the organisation.

According to Moosa (2007), from the TQM / Quality framework implementation view point; this requires real intent from every member of senior management for decision to initiate, creating a focal point, planning the implementation, providing necessary resources and reviewing the implementation performance. With respect to commitment of senior management, Sakthivel (2007, p. 259) believed this to be "nothing but the right kind of leadership directed towards addressing the stated and perceived needs of the customers". Sakthivel (2007) then concluded that not only the commitment of senior management and leadership but also visible participation had a huge impact on overall excellence and as such commitment of the senior management increases, overall excellence increases as well. Senior management commitment is the most critical success factor for TQM and Excellence Model implementation and to develop and reinforce a quality culture as established by many empirical studies (Baidoun, 2003; Soltani, 2005). According to Baba et al. (2001), TQM initiatives would not function without senior management’s commitment and visible participation in quality initiatives.

According to Arasli (2002), if individual member of senior management will not fully embrace for quality culture change and continuous improvement, then motivating lower levels of the organisation would be impossible. Moreover, lack of management commitment and their total participation will result in (i) poor planning (ii) failure to change organisation's culture and (iii) work force resistance (Soltani et al. (2008a). Mosadegh Rad (2005) highlighted that lack of senior management commitment and involvement and their instability are the major barriers for successful implementation of TQM programs. Thiagaran and Zairi (2001) highlighted top management commitment and their involvement in TQM implementation as one of the main reasons for TQM and quality excellence framework implementation failure.

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From the above discussion, it can be appreciated that there is an agreement among the scholars that senior management commitment and their visible participation in quality initiatives are most vital success factors. Most of the scholars considered it as very important individual level factor as commitment and visible participation of each can be an enabler for the success of TQM / quality excellence framework or can act as a barrier if senior management commitment is lacking.