Centro Histórico, Componentes Políticos y Sociales.

Labelling the leading thinkers as “gurus” has been a particular feature in much o f the TQM literature although the basis upon which this label has been attached remains unclear. For example, Flood (1993) found no difficulty in elevating Feigenbaum, Taguchi and Shingo to guru status, whilst MacDonald and Piggott (1991) were more comfortable in distinguishing between "major" gurus o f Deming, Crosby, and Juran and "minor" gurus, the latter comprising Conway, Feigenbaum, Harrington, Imai, Ishikawa, Mizuno, Schonberger and Taguchi.

More sceptical commentators have suggested that the guru term is only appropriate because it conjures up images o f mysticism (Pollit 1993). But does this mysticism exist because the issue is com plex or because it lacks substance? It is true that the leading writers have stressed different aspects o f managing quality. Authors, such as Oakland (1989), have dismissed such differences as being merely semantic. Others, have seen discrepancies as indicative o f fundamental problems within the whole TQM philosophy and, thus, have had difficulty reconciling the differences (W ilkinson et al 1993; Willmott 1995).

Definitions o f TQM can appear deceptively simple, thus, BS 4778 Part 3 (1991) defined TQM as:

A management philosophy embracing all activities through which the needs and expectations of the customer and the community, and the objectives of the organisation are satisfied in the most efficient way by maximising the potential of all employees in a continuing drive for improvement.

However, the British Quality Association offered three alternative definitions o f quality. The first focused on the so called "soft" aspects o f culture, customer orientation, teamwork, and em ployee participatioiu.The second definition highlighted more technical aspects such as methods, control o f work, statistical procedures or the so called "hard aspects". The third was a mixture o f both hard and soft elements and attempted to stress both the technical and people aspects o f TQM.

It has been possible to trace certain similarities between TQM and the development o f Human Resource Management (HRM). Storey (1989; 1992) identified both "hard" and "soft" approaches to HRM, the former rooted in the rational Scientific School o f Management and the latter in the Human Relations School. The tensions which exist within HRM were highlighted by K eenoy (1990) who noted that "a remarkable feature o f HRM is the brilliant ambiguity o f the term" and that it could mean whatever one chose it to mean. He saw this feature as the cover for an

y^iHAyi^i lrifcc 1 rie IVUllUll UJ ^JUUlliy ideological shift in the employment relationship brought about by market pressures and similar criticisms have been made o f TQM by Tuckman (1991; 1992).

An alternative approach, favoured by Morgan and Murgatroyd (1994), has been to seek out the similarities within TQM rather than concentrate on the differences. Thus, TQM was identified as involving everything in an organisation, a society, or a community, which in the eyes o f others, determined its reputation on a comparative basis with the best o f the best alternatives; TQM was a total system o f quality improvement with decision making based on facts rather than gut feeling; TQM was not only about the quality o f the specific product or service which the end user or the customer purchased but was also about everything an organisation did internally to achieve

continuous performance improvement. TQM assumed that quality was the outcome o f all

activities that took place within an organisation; that all functions and all em ployees had to participate in the improvement process; that organisations needed both quality systems and a quality culture. TQM was a way o f managing an organisation so that every job, every process, was carried out first time every time. The key to achieving sustainable quality improvement, according to Sptitzer (1993), was through the adoption o f TQM principles.

In order to make sense o f the diverse messages emanating from the quality literature, several writers have suggested that a rigid adherence to the work o f one particular guru is inappropriate, (see Jackson 1990; Chatterjee and Yilmaz 1993; Bajaria 1995). Others, such as Dale and Cooper (1992), have observed that many organisations start o ff by adopting the teachings o f one o f the gurus although the implementation process soon moves organisations to develop their own tailored models, using ideas borrowed from each o f the gurus, to suit individual circumstances.

Synthesising the gurus’ ideas has been advocated by Bendell (1991) and Bajaria (1995). On the other hand, Smith (1986) Dale et al (1994) and Oakland (1990) all identify confusion amongst ch ief executives concerning the approach to take, as a major barrier to the implementation o f TQM.

The high incidence o f reported TQM failures, around 80-85% in the UK (see The Economist. 1992), indicates that its implementation has not been straight forward. It has been suggested that the problem o f implementation might well relate to problems associated with the concept itself. Several writers, for example, have highlighted the limited extent to which the TQM literature draws upon established organisational theory. In particular, doubts have been raised by Wilkinson et al (1991; 1993) about the efficacy o f TQM with its implicit view o f management as a technical resource and where decision making process is rational and linear in nature. Organisations as political entities (see Morgan 1986) are not touched upon by the gurus. I f TQM

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