Figure 2. 1Concept map for literature review Source: developed for this research.
2.2 Immediate discipline
2.2.1 TQM- a systems perspective
2.2.2 Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for TQM 2.2.3 Different international quality awards
2.2.4 Synthesis of system dynamics, CSFs and quality award criteria
2.2.5 TQM and ISO 2.2.6 TQM and culture 2.2.7 Indian bureaucracy
2.2.8 TQM and transformational leadership
2.3 Summary of above and overview of central problem
2.4 Identification of the gaps which need investigation
Parent discipline 1
2.1.1Organisational change
Parent discipline 2
2.1.2 Total Quality Management
2.1.3 TQM as a philosophy of change
2.1 Parent discipline
2.1.1 Parent discipline 1-Organisational Change
Organisational change models closely parallel how organizations have been viewed over time. From ‘scientific management’ to ‘organisational development’ and ‘organisational studies’, the study of organization has moved from a study of mechanical functions from a closed system perspective to a study of complex adaptive functions from an open system perspective. Within open systems theory, contingency theory materialised as a means of accounting for change within an organization. Contingency theory states that depending on the level of turmoil within an organization, different systems theories should be adopted for facilitating change. Thus in a government organization where stability and bureaucracy cause change to occur slowly, a more mechanistic model should be adopted (McElyea 2003, p.63).
Within the field of organisational change, a comparison of the traditional change model and complex adaptive model of organization change is shown in Table 2.1.
Traditional Models of Organisational Change
Complex Adaptive Model of Organisational Change
Few variables determine outcome Innumerable variables determine outcome The whole is equal to the sum of its parts
(reductionist)
The whole is different from the sum of its parts
Direction is determined by design and power of a few leaders
Direction is determined by emergence and the participation of many people
Individual or system behaviour is knowable, predictable and controllable
Individual or system behaviour is unknowable, unpredictable and uncontrollable
Causality is linear: every effect can be traced back to a specific cause
Causality is mutual: every cause is also an effect and every effect is a cause
Relationship are directive Relationship are empowering All systems are essentially the same Each system is unique
Efficiency and reliability are measures of value
Responsiveness to the environment is the measure of value
Decisions are based on facts and data Decisions are based on tensions and patterns Leaders are experts and authorities Leaders are facilitators and supporters
Table 2. 1Traditional change model vs. complex adaptive change model Source: McElyea (2003, p. 63).
Mastenbroek (1996) looks upon organisational change in historical perspective and emphasises that organizational change is essentially a duality management, a balance between autonomy and interdependence, between steering and self-organization. From this perspective, strategies such as empowerment cannot be corrected without strong steering.
Top-down reengineering cannot be balanced without the responsibility and creativity of work units. Mastenbroek says that TQM and continuous improvements often do not live up to their promises because the line organization is involved in rather awkward ways. All kinds of analysis and research, internal and external consultants obstruct the development of steering and self-organization in the line organization. This impedes the cultural change necessary to give continuous improvement momentum. Capacities for steering and self-organization are critical assets for such a culture. It is to be noted that this approach does not ask for an absolute participative management style, rather a balance between participative and directive style. A similar view has also been expressed by Cunha, Cunha and Dahab (2002). They have
called for a dialectic synthesis between the ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ (‘yin’ and ‘yang’) side of management to get a better look at TQM as shown in Figure 2.2.
Figure 2. 2The yin-yang of TQM
Source: Cunha, Cunha and Dahab (2002).
2.1.2 Parent discipline 2– Total Quality Management 2.1.2.1 Historical background
Today, TQM has become a part of corporate management on a global scale (Lakhe &
Mohanty 1994; Melan 1998; Yusof & Aspinwall 2000). Quality today is studied under the overall umbrella of ‘Total Quality Management’. The improvements brought about by TQM in the Japanese industry are too well known to merit repetition here. Quality as a concept has moved from being an attribute of the product or service to encompass all the activities of an organization.
The core philosophy of TQM as it is understood today is that each step in a production process is seen as a relationship between a customer and a supplier (whether internal or external to the organization). The suppliers will have to meet the customer’s
Norm
Standardization Control Methods
Statistics Participation Inspection trust
Planning creativity Top Down Leadership Suggestions Quantity self-control
bottom up leaders
collaboration
democratic leadership quality
autonomy
requirements, both stated and implied, at the lowest cost. Waste elimination and continuous improvement are ongoing activities.
The early development of total quality management was influenced by a few quality
‘gurus’: Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, Crosby and Ishikawa. Their key contribuitions to the quality movement will now be looked at.
The work of Deming: The main thesis of Deming is that by improving quality, it is possible to increase productivity which results in improved competitiveness of a business enterprise.
According to Deming, low quality results in high cost which will lead to loss of competitive position in the market. His approach can be summarised in his 14 point programme (Gaither
& Frazier 1999, p. 634):
(i) Create constancy of purpose for improvement of product and service.
(ii) Refuse to allow commonly accepted levels of delay for mistakes, defective material, defective workmanship.
(iii) Cease dependence on mass inspection to achive quality.
(iv) Reduce the number of suppliers. Buy on statistical evidence, not price.
(v) Constantly and forever improve the system of costs, quality, productivity and service.
(vi) Institute modern methods of training on the job.
(vii) Focus supervision on helping people to do a better job.
(viii) Drive out fear.
(ix) Break down barriers between departments. Encourage problem solving through team work.
(x) Eliminate numerical goals slogans, posters for the workforce.
(xi) Use statistical methods for continuing improvement of quality and productivity and eliminate work standards prescribing numerical quotas.
(xii) Remove barriers to pride of workmanship.
(xiii) Institute a vigorous program of education and training.
(xiv) Clearly define management’s permanent commitment to quality and productivity.
From these initial concepts, Deming later developed what he called the ‘system of profound knowledge’ (Bauer, Reiner & Schamchale 2000, p.412). This means appreciation of a system, knowledge about variation, theory of knowledge and psychology. Deming said that only if the top management is able to understand the company as a complex system, are they able to successfully improve the structures of the system ( Bauer, Reiner & Schamschule 2000, p.412).
The work of Juran : Unlike Deming whose approach was more process oriented, the ideas of Juran were having a managerial flavour (Kruger 2001). His main contribution was that
quality control must be an integral part of the management function. This broadened the understanding of quality. Visible leadership and personal involvement of top management is important in inspiring quality across the organisation.
According to Juran (1988), to demonstrate commitment to quality the management should establish a quality council which would coordinate the company’s various activities regarding quality. Further, the management should establish a ‘quality policy’ which should guide the managerial action. The management has to establish quality goals which should be expressed in numbers and should have a time frame. Once a specific goal has been established by the management, it is the responsibility of the management to provide the necessary resources to achive the quality goals.
Juran developed the improvement spiral showing that quality improvement is a continuous process and not just a programme with start and end point (Bauer, Reiner &
Schamschule 2000). Later these very concepts were incorporated in the ISO 9000: 2000 standard.
The work of Ishikawa: He recognised that for TQM to be sucessful, the tools and techniques of using data to make decisions must be understood by the workers and first-line supervisors /managers. Accordingly, his techniques and the explanation for application are simple and straightforward. For him, the ultimate purpose of data is to take action based on data. Thus data can be used for understanding the actual situation, analysis, process control and regulation as well as for the traditional acceptance and rejection decisions.
The work of Crosby: While Deming and Juran described the TQM philosophy and Ishikawa provided the tools and techniques, Crosby offered a detailed guide to implementation. He proposed a quality management grid that described the stages of TQM implementation relative to management’s understanding and problem-solving techniques, the organisational approach, and the results achieved. Each stage of Crosby’s matrix represents an increasingly mature implementation of the TQM philosophy (Crosby 1981).
The work of Feigenbaum: He can be considered the originator of the concept of total quality control. His main contributions are two:
(i) Quality is the responsibility of everyone in an organisation. Quality is produced not only by the production department, but also by marketing, finance, purchasing, and any other department. It is the total participation of all employees and the total integration of all the company’s technical and human resources that will lead to long term business success.
Feigenbaum thus developed the concept of quality at source which means that every employee will have to do his/her work with perfect quality. In total quality control, where
product quality is more important than production rate, the worker is given the power to stop the production if a quality related problem occurs.
(ii) He recognised the cost of non-quality which according to him consists of cost of control and cost of failure of control. Both have to be minimised. Cost of control should be measured by prevention cost (e.g. quality training of employee) which should keep defective part from occuring and appraisal cost (e.g. quality audit costs) which covers the costs of maintaining the quality level of the company. The cost of failure of control is also measured in two areas:
internal failure cost (e.g. scrap) and external failure cost (e.g. customer complaints, reworked material).
Thus the emphasis of Feigenbaum is not so much to create managerial awareness about quality as to assist an organisation to design its own quality system which involves every employee (Kruger 2001, p.152).
2.1.2.2 Commonalty among quality gurus:
Though the approach of each one of the quality gurus mentioned above has been different, there are commonalities in their work. A summary of their commonalities is shown in Table 2.2.
Concept/
Cost reduction The price of non-conformance
Looking at the commonalities of concepts among different gurus of TQM, it can be noted that ‘customer satisfaction’ and ‘reducing costs’ are the two achievable- the two outcomes of TQM. On the other hand, leadership, training, use of teams and ‘having the appropriate culture’ are the four processes by which the two outcomes can be achieved.
A review of research related to each of the four processes of leadership, training, use of teams and culture is now done.
TQM and leadership: Research on TQM has consistently found strong link between successful TQM implementation and leadership (Ehrenberg & Stupak 1994; Rao, Raghunathan & Solis 1997; Zairi 2002). In general they have argued that top management’s ability to create a vision and promote change is at the heart of successful implementation of TQM. In the specific context of a railway – Mass Transit Railway Corporation, Hong Kong - the importance of visionary leadership has been emphasized for successful implementation of TQM (Chan et al. 2002). Leaders must understand culture and recognise those elements that cannot be changed. They must be able to create an environment where they can empower others to act both independently and interdependently. They must provide a vision that focuses on quality and meeting customer’s expectations. In other words, top management need transformational leadership skill. On the other hand, the role of middle management in initiating and institutionalising small, incremental improvements has been noted by Frohman (1997).
TQM and culture: The aspect of culture has been emphasised by the founding fathers of TQM. TQM de-emphasises status distinctions and empowers employees to make decisions and use their own intelligence (Crosby 1981; Deming reported by Tata & Prasad 1998, p.
705). The aspect of culture has been emphasised by other authors also (Chin & Pun 2002;
Lakhe & Mohanty 1994; Pun 2001; Sahay & Walsham 1997). Tata and Prasad (1998) have reasoned that one of the reasons for failure of TQM implementation is that culturally many organizations were unprepared to change.
In a similar vein, it been reported that implementation of TQM is one of the most complex activities that any company can attempt, due to the fact that it involves a change in the working culture and impacts on people (Mani, Murgan & Rajendran 2003). In the Chinese context, the successful adoption of TQM depended largely on the management of cultural dynamics and organisational complexities of the enterprise (Pun 2001).
Emphasising the need of cultural change during TQM implementation, it has been argued that TQM calls for a new way of managing business, requiring a new thinking style- the thinking for quality (Yusof & Aspinwall 2000). According to them this is the basic reason for the success of TQM in Japan.
Culture has been found to be an important factor in empirically validated studies which aimed at arriving at ‘critical success factors (CSF)’ for successful implementation of TQM (Black & Porter 1996). It has also been corroborated by another empirical study of CSF for TQM in the Indian context (Wali, Deshmukh & Gupta 2003).
TQM and training: The review of literature corroborates the importance of training as an important factor for successful TQM implementation (Palo & Padhi 2003; Quazi, Hong &
Meng 2002). Training is considered a vehicle for implementing and reinforcing quality practice (Reed, Lemak & Mero 2002). Effective training and employee involvement have also been found to be important for initiating quality management practice in Indian context (Joseph et al 1999).
TQM and (cross functional) team: Teams are appropriate when there is a need for coordination of activity, when major breakthroughs in performance are required. Research has corroborated the importance given to team by the founding fathers of TQM (Black &
Porter 1996; Gupta 2000; Mandal et al. 2000). It has been reported that teams are very useful for integration of activities, generating production efficiencies (Quazi, Hong & Meng 2002) and for providing innovative approaches to production issues (Eisenhardt & Tabrizi 1995). In the specific context of a railway unit – Mass Transit Railway Corporation, Hong Kong - the importance of team has been highlighted for successful implementation of TQM (Chan et al.
2002, p.294).
Above, the literature in the area of organisational change and TQM has been briefly gone through. Now the literature dealing with the interrelationship between organisational change and TQM will be reviewed.
2.1.3 TQM as a philosophy of change
In the context of organisational change, TQM has been an important and popular management innovation and change programme in the 1990’s (Reed, Lemak & Mero
2002;Yong & Wilkinson 2002). Notwithstanding its popularity, there has also been criticism of TQM. TQM works better in the manufacturing sector than in service sector (Boyne &
Walker 2002, p.119). The implementation of TQM has not been an easy task for many organizations (Yusof & Aspinwall 2000, p.291). Thus the success rate of TQM implementation has been around 25% to 30% (Umesh, Bhusi & Kumar 2000). It has been said that the TQM model provides a self-assessment protocol outlining the criteria for business excellence, but without solid guidance on ‘how’ to achieve it (Chan et al. 2002).
Only about half of organizations have experienced improvements through TQM (Tata &
Prasad 1998). The same authors go on to suggest that this is because of the failure to pay sufficient attention to the cultural and structural variables that influence TQM implementation. However, others have considered TQM as a ‘long term journey with substantial hardship at the beginning which Juran calls sporadic spikes’ (Noronha 2002, p.215). Noronha further says that this positive view towards uncertainty provides the basis for a healthy attitude towards TQM.
At a more ideological level, TQM has been dismissed as a managerial control mechanism loosely disguised as a method of worker empowerment (Boje & Windsor quoted by Reed, Lemak & Mero 2002). Another criticism of TQM has been that it provides a rhetoric that is individually interpreted and therefore carries inconsistent meaning across contexts (Reed, Lemak & Mero 2002).
Cao, Clarke and Lehany (2000) studied TQM based organisational change programmes. According to them, the approaches to organisational change can be classified into four categories:
(i) Changes in process
(ii) Changes in functions (structural changes) (iii) Changes in values (cultural changes) (iv) Changes in power within the organization
They contend that for TQM to be successful, an approach which addresses all the above types of change is required. ‘However, since TQM as an approach, focuses almost entirely on the changes in process, a systemic approach is needed for successful implementation of TQM or its application needs to be restricted to those contexts where process dominates’ (Cao, Clarke & Lehany 2000, p.5). Thus, Cao, Clarke and Lehany concluded that the success of TQM programmes is in sharp contrast to its popularity.
In view of this criticism and given the multi attribute characteristics of TQM as emphasised by the founding fathers of TQM and supported by later research mentioned in section 2.1.2, a question arises that what are the different parameters or organisational attributes which are required for an effective implementation of TQM as it is understood today.
Three approaches have been used by different researchers to answer this question.
The approaches are
(i) TQM from a systems perspective.
(ii) Understanding the critical success factors (CSF) of TQM.
(iii) TQM as understood from different quality award models.
The basic thrust of this research is to understand whether TQM can be used for organisational transformation of Indian Railways. Thus understanding the parameters which account for the success or failure of TQM implementation will be useful for this research.
Therefore at first, each approach will be looked at in a global context and then focus will shift to Indian context. The global context will help understand TQM from the three approaches more generally and then their Indian context will explain their specific application in India.
This focuses the attention to the immediate discipline of this literature review.
2.2 Immediate discipline
2.2.1 Total Quality Management- a systems perspective
The first approach to the understanding of TQM is from a systems perspective.
System thinking developed in the 1950s as an alternative to traditional management thinking (McElyea 2003, p.59). The systems school grew out of the ‘general systems theory’
developed by the biologist Bertalanffy (McElyea 2003, Mirvis 1996) and the quantitative techniques- operations research and systems analysis—that were developed during the second world war. Further, Simon’s contributions on bounded rationality, satisficing, and incremental decision making recognised the complex environment in which post-war managers made decisions (Ehrenberg & Stupak, 1994, p. 77). System thinking school is aware that traditional management thinking does not have a full picture of situations in organizations. The system school views organizations as complex interrelationships amongst input, throughput (process), output, and feedback. From a systems point of view, an organization is an open and complex system with varying degrees of process flexibility and
many feedback loops which are used adaptively by an organization for its survival. In the context of organisational change, Harrington, Carr and Reid (1999) have explained three interrelated concepts of system, emergent properties and complexity. It is briefly explained now.
System is a set of different elements which together can perform a function which the constituent elements cannot perform alone. Emergent properties are those functions, good or bad, which would not exist except for the operation of the system. Complexity is something that is composed of interconnected elements that function as a system to produce emergent
System is a set of different elements which together can perform a function which the constituent elements cannot perform alone. Emergent properties are those functions, good or bad, which would not exist except for the operation of the system. Complexity is something that is composed of interconnected elements that function as a system to produce emergent