COMP MÍN T1 T2 T3 limpia

The interweaving of community expectations, government regulations and managerial attention to stakeholder interests is reflected in the quality movement. Reforms aimed at

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developing a favourable quality culture are generally credited to Japanese manufacturing companies that pioneered total quality management and a number of other related initia- tives, such as quality control, inventory control and the ‘just-in-time’ (JIT) approach during the late 1940s. These concepts, rooted in the ideas of the American consultant W. Edwards Deming, were developed to improve the quality of goods and services through statistical meth- ods and employee involvement, and were particularly embraced by postwar Japan in order to build customer (stakeholder) numbers. The entry of Japanese goods into traditional Western- based markets invigorated concern for assessing ‘best practices’ in work processes within and between companies.

These quality issues are of particular importance in services, where competition is often based entirely on the customers’ perceptions of comparative service quality (see Chapters4,

4and5). Industry sectors such as education, financial services, health, hospitality and recre- ation, retail, and tourism and travel are becoming reliant on stakeholder perceptions of quality for their survival. Many service companies, such as financial institutions and banks, conduct a great deal of their customer interactions by telephone or email communications. Conse- quently, the company representatives are specifically trained for technology-based customer interactions, and the quality of the engagement and communication is often monitored and assessed. For instance, a standard for service performance used by the financial giant Amer- ican Express is the speed with which lost or stolen American Express traveller’s cheques are replaced. Leading airline companies have systems for replacing stolen or lost tickets, and consequently, there are institutional techniques for evaluating the promptness with which the corporation can provide passengers with new flight vouchers. Identifying these best prac- tices has become known as ‘benchmarking’, and when these techniques are widely adopted in the international arena they are assessed by documentation now commonly referred to as the International Standards Organisation, ISO 9002 series.

The ISO 9000+ series quality standards were developed to identify the key elements of a quality system for manufactured products in domestic and international competition. They provide an overall framework to assess the quality of products, and the quality of the delivery system. The first criterion (that is, ISO 9001, 9002, 9003) emphasised the quality of results in terms of design and development, production and installation of processes, and final inspection and testing. These elements were designed for contractual situations, inter- nal audits of work procedures and quality (product or good) assessment. The second criterion (ISO 9004–2) was a guideline for the development and implementation of quality man- agement systems (TQM) more oriented to services. Nevertheless, while the intention was to achieve internal and external customer satisfaction (that is, quality of service), the pro- cesses were rooted in the standardisation of values for the manufacturing sector, and conse- quently, were not well suited for the diverse nature of services. Indeed, the components of the comprehension of quality are more complex. Today, a more educated society expects that, in addition to a reliable product, the production (process) will be in the interests of the sustainable ‘health of society’. Questions such as whether the delivery was within the bounds of ethical conduct of the involved stakeholders, or whether the affairs of the stakeholders who delivered the service were within acceptable bounds of ecological sustain- ability, are now considered by consumers. Thus, the ISO 9000, while still employed, has been extended (that is, ISO 14001, 18001) to incorporate the newer social expectations of stakeholders.

Quality-enhancing initiatives to improve organisational effectiveness were extensively refined when global market networks exploded during the 1990s. In addition to financial, inventory and budgetary controls, as mainstays to increase the probability of meeting organ- isational goals and standards, task forces or quality teams were commonly used by organ- isations to intensely scrutinise work arrangements and practices. Cross-functional teams assessed, identified, diagnosed and made recommendations to address quality problems. These non-traditional organisational mechanisms had the effect of dismantling artificial barriers between departments and decentralised operating procedures. Additionally, analytical stra- tegies were applied, which included statistical tools such as control charts, ‘pareto’ analysis and cost quality analysis. These new organisation-wide quality control approaches were depen- dent on expanding incumbent task autonomy and job knowledge, which began an emphasis on the re-skilling and re-education of employees. The overall aim was to ensure that cor- rective and preventive procedures would be quickly installed to minimise the perception of negative episodes, which included environmental consequences, or the impact on indigenous people’s communities and ways of life. Paradoxically, this increased attention on better cor- porate governance, by businesses that were some of the most powerful in the world, had roots in a number of significant failures during the 1980s. A number of tragic and disastrous events verified the need for more rigorous and comprehensive assessments of corporate activity.

Notable examples of corporate malfeasance, unethical business practices, and excessive risk taking by leading corporations of the 1980s would include the following calamities: