Information & Management 38 (2001) 355371

Exploring the relationship between total quality management and information systems development
Lillian Y. Fok*, Wing M. Fok, Sandra J. Hartman
Department of Management, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA 70148, USA Received 19 June 2000; accepted 15 September 2000

Abstract This study examines a series of relationships between total quality management (TQM) and information systems (IS) development. Specically, we consider whether organizations which have more fully adopted TQM will be different in their approaches to IS development. Our ndings suggest that where TQM is adopted more fully, there will be a signicant impact on four areas of IS development: system goals; system design philosophy/concepts; assumptions made by IS professionals about system users and user involvement in system development. We also report evidence that both TQM and IT may require similar organizational cultures. # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Total quality management; Quality maturity; Systems development; System design goals and philosophy

1. Introduction In this study, we examine the potential relationships between two widely adopted strategies for dealing with the need to gain competitiveness by organizations throughout the US. One series of strategies involves the adoption of the many quality management programs falling generally under the total quality management (TQM) rubric, while another approach has emphasized the use of information systems (IS) or information technology (IT) as a vehicle for attaining quality. Both programs offer potential for responding to customer needs, effecting cost savings, and the like, and considerable study has been directed toward their impacts upon a variety of organizational effectiveness measures [15]. However, we were unable to discover
Corresponding author. Tel.: 1-504-280-6481; fax: 1-504-280-3951. E-mail address: yfok@uno.edu (L.Y. Fok).
*

empirical evidence on their impacts upon each other in the organizational setting [6,7]. Yet research dating back to the early work in the development of sociotechnical systems theory [8,9] has consistently shown that the systems comprising an organization cannot be examined in isolation, and that changes in one system will inevitably impact others. In this study, we examine the inter-relationships among three organizational factors: TQM program adoption; IS development and culture. Specically, we consider whether organizations which have more fully adopted TQM will approach IS development differently from those with less TQM adoption and the effects by and upon culture. 2. The study of IT impacts It is almost a commonplace to describe the current business environmental setting as turbulent. The marketplace has become more global and service

0378-7206/01/$ see front matter # 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S 0 3 7 8 - 7 2 0 6 ( 0 0 ) 0 0 0 7 5 - 6

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oriented; consumers' tastes have become more demanding and sophisticated; the work force has become more mature and diverse. Many US rms have found it increasingly difcult to compete under these conditions [1015]. To survive in the current business environment, many organizations have found it necessary to look for ways to enhance productivity and responsiveness in order to restore their competitiveness and to improve their nancial performance. Many have looked to IT as a panacea. IT has been used as a means to increase productivity, improve quality, enhance the organization's competitive edge, increase service, and reduce costs [10,12,16,17]. The road to success through IT has proved anything, but a universal cure for many companies, however. For many, heavy investment was made in computer hardware and software with the belief that a powerful computerized system could solve what were, in effect, organizational problems. Where organizational factors led to an inability to respond throughout the organization to the fast changing IS technology, however, the technology itself became a critical factor leading to eventual failure. In contrast, the companies that used IT successfully were those that used it proactively and strategically. These companies used IT in all aspects of organizational functions, from order entry to after-sales services. Moreover, some companies used IT to develop distinctive competence in their industries. For example, Wal-Mart has been able to achieve an efcient reordering system through connecting their stores' point of sales terminals to their computerized inventory management system. Sears, at one point in time, used the data base developed from their catalogue business to develop their nancial business. By so doing, these companies gained competitiveness [18]. Ever since IT became widely accepted as essential to organizational effectiveness, its relationship to the organization's competitiveness has been an area of interest to researchers. Many descriptive and prescriptive researches have appeared in journals in the past two decades [18,1922]. Most research in the IS technology area, however, has tended to view IS in isolation and to concentrate on how to develop and implement successful IS systems within the organization. While a few researchers have pointed out that synergies could be achieved if IS is developed in the TQM environment [6,7], there has been very limited

effort on investigating empirically the impact of TQM on IS development. 3. The study of TQM impacts An alternative approach to improve competitiveness has been the adoption of TQM, as many US companies have come to realize that improved quality is an essential ingredient for successful global competition [15]. TQM has been widely adopted as an integrative management philosophy aimed at continuously improving the quality of products and processes to meet or exceed customer expectations [23]. Under TQM, organizations began to emphasize the importance of satisfying the needs of customers, both internal and external. Companies began to evolve from vertical functional silos toward a horizontal process orientation. Under TQM, employees are asked not only to participate in decision making, they are empowered to make their own decisions. For the most part, organizations embracing concepts of quality reported that they were able to turn their previous quality problems around. TQM success stories suggest that, if implemented appropriately, TQM has the potential to not only increase competitiveness, but also to improve organizational effectiveness and, in most cases, produce more satised customers as well as employees. TQM success stories have been reported in manufacturing, health care, education, banking, and government agencies [1,13,2327]. However, not all organizations that adopted TQM were successful in their undertaking. The primary reasons cited for the failures include the lack of top management commitment, unrealistic expectations about the time frame and cost of TQM implementation, failure to develop and sustain a quality-oriented culture, and lack of employee cooperation and motivation [25,2833]. In effect, problems such as these suggest that qualitative problems with TQM implementation may lead to situations where the organization claims to be ``on TQM'' but, in fact, TQM has not been adequately adopted. Analysis of organizations utilizing IS or TQM effectively suggests that successful adoption, in both cases, requires more than simply incorporating the ``tools''. In the case of TQM, the need for embracing a qualitative component, the TQM philosophy, is

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especially notable, and it is likely that failure to do this lies behind many reported TQM failures. This issue is compounded when we examine how studies have gone about measuring TQM adoption. Specically, our review of the literature suggests that many previous studies have a methodological problem which is of importance to this research. Virtually all TQM studies we examined encountered problems with the denition and explicit measurement of the degree of TQM implementation in an organization. Often, studies have confounded the length of time an organization reports ``being on'' TQM with the completeness or effectiveness of the implementation. Unfortunately, however, length of time on any program, with TQM obviously included, tells little about the quality of the implementation. Where programs are poorly or incompletely implemented, being on them for a long period of time may do little to improve their quality. Taken these ideas together, we suggest that one potential cause of reported failures of TQM, even in organizations which had ``been on'' TQM for some time, may be that these organizations had not fully adopted TQM in a qualitative sense. 4. Measuring TQM maturity In this study, we are concerned with these qualitative aspects of TQM implementation and this concern has led us to develop a construct which we refer to as TQM maturity. TQM maturity, as used in this study, refers, in a qualitative sense, to the degree of TQM implementation in an organization. We argue that it can be measured by examining three dimensions: the perceived use of TQM programs; employees' perceived inuence on quality issues and employees' understanding of specic TQM tools/techniques (see Fig. 1). These ideas assume that if an organization has more completely followed the TQM philosophy, TQM programs should be used throughout the organization and in various functional areas, rather than in isolation. Moreover, since TQM emphasizes the role of each individual in the quality process, where the TQM philosophy is more fully in place, employees should report that they have inuence and control over quality issues. Finally, if ``quality is indeed everyone's job'' in organization, where TQM is more fully in place, employees should have a good understanding of

Fig. 1. Research model.

various TQM tools and techniques. If an organization, on the other hand, has very little or no experience with TQM, the opposite is expected to occur. These ideas seem intuitively appealing, but we were surprised to learn that little empirical work has attempted to measure TQM maturity aside from examining reported length of time ``on TQM''. The need to develop more useful measures leads to our rst research question. Research question 1. TQM maturity of an organization is a reection of the use of TQM programs within an organization, people's perception of their inuence on quality issues, and individual understanding of TQM concepts. The three concepts, therefore, should be positively correlated with each other. 5. A systems approach to TQM and IS Recently, research efforts in the TQM area have also included the investigation of how TQM can be used in conjunction with other organizational improvement efforts. Relationships between quality, technology, and global competition have been studied [34] and applying TQM in an R&D environment has also received recent attention [35]. The possibility of integrating TQM with industrial engineering or with business process redesign has also been considered [36,37]. From the perspective of this study, it appears

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reasonable to expect that there may be important linkages and synergies when TQM and IT are considered together, as well. We expect that most managers would also agree that in order to implement quality systems successfully, organizations need to have the appropriate infrastructures in place. Most importantly, the information system has to be effective. For instance, in order to satisfy the organization's customers, information on their needs and preferences must be collected; to function with a process orientation, IT can be crucial. Yet despite the individual signicance of TQM and IT to the organization and the potential for synergy among them, surprisingly little has been done to examine the two together. Among the few existing discussions available, Ahmed and Ravichandran [6], Chou et al. [7] and Woodall et al. [15] all descriptively suggested that when the two programs are properly applied together, they have the potential to help an organization attain new levels of competitive strength. Jasinowski [38] identied 10 paths to organizational success, where TQM and the use of IT are among the top three paths. We believe there are many areas that IT and TQM may potentially afford synergies if used in concert. In this research, we examine one of them: TQM maturity and IS design. It is apparent that for IT to be successful, incorporating quality into the initial IS design and development will be a critical factor. However, no research has been published on exactly how IS development may be affected in organizations which adopt high levels of TQM. It seems reasonable to suggest that organizations which have more fully incorporated TQM in a qualitative sense (i.e. are higher in TQM maturity) would approach the design/development of a new information system very differently than those which have not. We specically consider the issue of whether having a mature TQM adoption in an organization will affect the design/development of a new information system. We investigate the impact of TQM maturity on four aspects of IS development: the goal emphasis of the IS development process (i.e. people versus economics goals); the system design philosophy and concepts; the IS staff's assumptions about system users and the levels of user participation/ involvement in the system design process (see Fig. 1). In summary, our second research question deals with the issue of impacts of TQM maturity upon system

development, and we develop several sub-research questions to deal with specic issues. Research question 2. Increases in TQM maturity (dened as use of TQM programs, people's perceived inuence on quality issues, and individual understanding of TQM concepts) will be associated with changes in several IS development variables. The rst relationship we propose is based upon the employee-centered aspects of more TQM mature organizations. We expect organizations which are higher in TQM maturity to be more developed in the four basic TQM principles: customer satisfaction; continuous improvement; employee empowerment and teamwork. Two of these principles have a direct impact on the perceived importance of system goals in IS development. To satisfy and to empower the internal customers the system users in organizations which are higher in TQM maturity, we would expect more emphasis to be placed upon people-related goals when developing IS. Such goals include improving quality of working life, increasing job satisfaction, boosting morale, enhancing the quality of work, increasing the skills of employees, making the jobs easier, and increasing work effectiveness. These ideas lead to the rst part of our second research question. Research question 2a. As TQM maturity increases, system development projects will have more emphasis on people-related goals, or social goals, when developing IS. The next part of our second research question deals with empowerment in organizations which are higher in TQM maturity. To achieve a synergistic effect we suggest that TQM ideas and the IS design philosophy must be consistent with each other. The employee empowerment concept, then, when being translated into a system design philosophy, indicates that a new system should enable the users to have more control of the work environment, help the users learn multiple skills, allow personal growth, and help the users work effectively in a team environment. These ideas lead to the second part of research question 2. Research question 2b. As TQM maturity increases, the system design philosophy will emphasize employee empowerment and self-learning. What relationships between IS people and users should we expect? Traditionally, IS staff members have regarded themselves as the experts in the system

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development process and have downplayed the signicance of system users [1921,3945]. Hemphill [30] states that for TQM to be successful, TQM must rst become an attitude, then a philosophy, and nally a process in the organization. This approach implies that, at the individual level, everyone within an organization needs to change their attitudes regarding quality related issues. If an organization adopts TQM in a qualitative sense, the system users, then, should be viewed as internal customers and the IS staff should have positive attitudes toward them and users should sense their increased concern and respect. These ideas lead to the third part of research question 2. Research question 2c. As TQM maturity increases, system users will report that the MIS staff makes more positive assumptions about system users. Finally, TQM is a management initiative that solicits employee involvement in solving quality and organizational problems. Therefore, if TQM maturity is high in an organization, we should expect to nd that system development responsibility is delegated to the lowest possible organizational levels system users. This idea leads to the fourth part of the research question 2. Research question 2d. As TQM maturity increases, system users will report higher levels of participation in the system development process. 6. TQM and organizational culture The fourth part of the research question developed above deals with how we expect higher TQM maturity organizations to approach the IS development process. A nal area for research in this study involves the culture in which we expect IT implementations and TQM to be successful. Recall that our earlier discussion pointed out that there have been a number of instances where both TQM programs and IT implementations have failed. There is at least some anecdotal evidence which suggests that rigid, more autocratic organizations lack the exibility to successfully adopt either type of program [46]. Possibly both IT and TQM require similar organizational cultures, and having an appropriate organizational culture may be vital for either one to be successful (see Fig. 1). Our nal research question treats TQM maturity as the

driving force in the relationship we have considered and is designed to test the notion that organizational culture must be aligned with the TQM philosophy in order to gain signicant results. This leads to the last research question. Research question 3. TQM maturity will be associated with a TQM supportive culture. 7. Methodology 7.1. Design Four major types of empirical research designs are commonly used in the management literature: laboratory experiments; eld experiments; surveys and case studies. In this study, use of surveys represents an appropriate research method for investigation because this study focuses on how total quality management affects information system development. 7.2. Subjects In this study, 221 managers in the Southern United States were surveyed. All managers were from companies that have had a computer IS development within 2 years prior to the survey. Both manufacturing and service companies were surveyed in this study. Note that these managers, as subjects of our study, were the users of the new system, and our study is designed to evaluate their perceptions of their organization, its culture, its TQM maturity, and how IS staff carried out its responsibilities in systems design. The managers were called on the telephone and provided with an explanation of the purpose of the study. For those managers who agreed to participate in the study, survey questionnaires were sent. There are 153 male and 63 female managers in the sample. Their ages ranged from 25 to 69 years with an average age of 36.5. 7.3. Data The operationalization of the research variables is depicted in Appendix A. TQM maturity was measured by the perceived use of TQM programs within an organization, the perceived inuence on quality issues, and the understanding of specic TQM

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L.Y. Fok et al. / Information & Management 38 (2001) 355371 Table 1 Factor analysis on perceived use of TQM programs Rotated factor pattern Technique oriented Factor 1 TQM program Quality circle Statistical process control charts Employees' suggestions channels Employees' quality training program Quality improvement seminars Acceptance sampling
a

tools/concepts. System development goals were measured by the managers' ratings of the perceived importance of technical goals (Appendix B; survey questionnaire Section I, Question 1a, f, g, i, and j) and social/people goals (Section I, Question 1b, c, e, h, k, and l). The system design philosophy was measured with six items (Section I, Question 3). Respondents were asked if a new system should give users more control, help users learn multiple skills, help users have multiple responsibilities, facilitate users' learning, allow personal growth, and help users work with others. The perceptions of users were measured with nine items (Section I, Question 4). Respondents were asked if the system users are perceived to be responsible, creative, active, able to control work situations, able to work without close supervision, imaginative, powerful, future oriented, and concerned with quality. Users' involvement in the system development process was measured by users' level of participation in eight developmental activities (Section I, Question 5), ranging from development of overall corporate MIS plans to setting system-related policies. Organization culture is measured by asking the respondents if the organization is perceived to be open, tough, competitive, formal, confrontational, team oriented, impersonal, centralized, participative, quality oriented, innovative, proactive, and a technology leader. 8. Results Our rst step was to examine the scales used in this study. Recall that we had said that organizations which were higher in TQM maturity should have three characteristics: use of TQM programs throughout the organization, perceptions of inuence on the part of organizational members, and reports by members that they understand TQM concepts, and our TQM maturity scale reected these areas (see Tables 1 and 2). We then used factor analysis to look for dimensionality within the sub-scales. As shown in Table 1, factor analysis provided a two-factor solution for the rst TQM maturity dimension the use of TQM programs in an organization. We interpreted factor 1 as organizational use of ``technique oriented TQM programs'' and factor 2 as organizational use of

People oriented Factor 2 0.20 0.11 0.11 0.89a 0.73a 0.52a 0.26

0.76a 0.85a 0.77a 0.00 0.40 0.57a 0.70a

Item with high correlation with a factor.

``people oriented TQM programs''. The Cronbach's alphas for factor 1 and 2 are 0.89 and 0.82, respectively. Table 2 depicts the factor analysis solution for the third TQM maturity dimension individuals' understanding of TQM tools/concepts. We name factor 1 as understanding of ``core TQM concepts'', factor 2 as understanding of ``macro TQM concepts'', and factor 3 as understanding of ``micro TQM concepts''. The Cronbach's alphas for factor 1, 2 and 3 are 0.94, 0.85 and 0.89, respectively. We continued in the same way with factor analysis of our remaining scales. When factor analysis was run on the system development variables (at the right hand side of Fig. 1), the system goals variable has a twofactor solution, while the design philosophy and the user perceptions variables provide a one-factor solution. Table 3 shows the factor analysis result for system goals. We name factor 1 as ``technical goals'' emphasis and factor 2 as ``social goals'' emphasis in systems development. The Cronbach's alphas for factor 1 and 2 are 0.74 and 0.61, respectively. The organizational climate construct is measured by a series of paired opposite items asking whether the climate should be described as open versus closed, soft versus tough, and the like. Table 4 provides the items and shows the results of the factor analysis. As the table indicates, we obtained a four-factor solution in the case of the climate items as well, and have labeled factor 1 as ``reactive/proactive'' climate, factor 2 as ``hard/soft'' climate, factor 3 as ``individualistic/collectivistic'' climate, and factor 4 as ``centralized/ decentralized'' climate. The Cronbach's alphas for

L.Y. Fok et al. / Information & Management 38 (2001) 355371 Table 2 Factor analysis on individual TQM understanding Rotated factor pattern Core concepts TQM Quality circle Process control charts Deming's 14-point of quality improvement Pareto diagram Cause-and-effect diagram Malcolm Baldrige award Deming prize Benchmarking Quality function deployment ISO 9000 Process capability Nominal group technique Deming's ``red-bead'' experiment Check sheet Flow Chart
a

361

Macro concepts Factor 2 0.73a 0.82a 0.63a 0.45 0.38 0.01 0.46 0.41 0.32 0.26 0.32 0.35 0.16 0.11 0.10 0.20

Micro concepts Factor 3 0.23 0.11 0.33 0.09 0.05 0.29 0.08 0.00 0.43 0.29 0.03 0.38 0.38 0.10 0.83* 0.83*

Factor 1 0.21 0.25 0.26 0.73a 0.71a 0.72a 0.52a 0.74a 0.54a 0.66a 0.58a 0.54a 0.65a 0.78a 0.12 0.08

Item with high correlation with a factor.

factor 1, 2, 3 and 4 are 0.89, 0.86, 0.83 and 0.63, respectively. In summary, for the instruments that we developed in this study, the Cronbach's alphas range from 0.61 to 0.94. The results imply that the created scales are reliable and can be used for subsequent analyses.

Our rst research question suggested that our three proposed dimensions of TQM maturity should be related, and we investigated the correlations between the three dimensions of TQM maturity. As shown in Table 5, both factors of the use of TQM programs dimension ``technique oriented'' and the ``social

Table 3 Factor analysis on system development goals Rotated factor pattern Technical goals Factor 1 Increase work efficiency Increase quality of working life Increase job satisfaction Increase work effectiveness Increase morale Increase control of resources and operating activities Increase output Make job easier Reduce operating cost Reduce manpower Improve overall ``quality'' of work/service Increase skills of workers
a

Social goals Factor 2 0.29 0.69a 0.80a 0.29 0.83a 0.23 0.27 0.43 0.30 0.25 0.54a 0.15

0.81a 0.43 0.27 0.79a 0.10 0.70a 0.77a 0.57 0.75a 0.79a 0.47 0.76a

Item with high correlation with a factor.

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Table 4 Factor analysis on organizational culture Versus Rotated factor pattern Reactive/proactive Factor 1 Open versus closed Soft versus tough Collaborative versus competitive Informal versus formal Cooperative versus confrontational Team oriented versus individualistic Personal versus impersonal Decentralized versus centralized Participative versus directive Quality oriented versus quality lacking Innovation promoting versus lacking Proactive versus reactive Technology leader versus follower
a

Hard/soft Factor 2 0.48 0.62a 0.67a 0.76a 0.10 0.37a 0.07 0.22 0.35 0.39 0.14 0.21 0.06

Individualistic/ collectivistic Factor 3 0.50a 0.24 0.17 0.14 0.75a 0.37a 0.74a 0.04 0.50a 0.44 0.06 0.07 0.12

Centralized/ decentralized Factor 4 0.30 0.16 0.08 0.31 0.11 0.05 0.18 0.80a 0.48a 0.03 0.14 0.09 0.16

0.26 0.33 0.23 0.03 0.04 0.34 0.19 0.01 0.13 0.50a 0.83a 0.77a 0.76a

Item with high correlation with a factor.

oriented'' are positively correlated with the perceived inuence on quality issues and the three factors of the understanding of TQM concepts (``core'', ``macro'', and ``micro'' TQM concepts) dimension. This is consistent with our original idea that as organizations adopt more TQM (technique and people oriented) programs, the employees will have high levels of inuence on quality issues and should have high levels of understanding of various (core, macro, and micro) TQM tools/concepts (see Fig. 2).

The second research question was intended to assess the impact of TQM maturity on four areas of IS development: system goals, design philosophy, perceptions toward users, and user participation. The results are summarized in Table 6. Research question 2a suggests that TQM maturity impacts the emphasis upon social/people goals versus technical goals in systems development. As shown in Table 6, the use of ``technique oriented'' TQM programs in an organization was found to have a positive correlation

Table 5 Correlation between use of TQM programs, perceived influence of quality issues, and understanding of TQM concepts Use of TQM Programs Technique oriented Use of TQM programs Technique oriented People oriented Perceived influence Understanding of TQM Core concepts Macro concepts Micro concepts
* **

Understanding of TQM Perceived influence 0.14* 0.46* 1.00 Core concept 0.14* 0.07 0.03 1.00 1.00 Macro concept 0.37* 0.15* 0.29* 0.00 0.00 1.00 Micro concept 0.19* 0.18* 0.12 0.00

People oriented 0.00** 1.00

1.00

Correlation is significant at 0.05% level. Correlation between factors of the same construct is zero.

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Fig. 2. Results of research question 1.

Table 6 Correlation between TQM maturity (use of TQM programs, perceived influence, and understanding of TQM concepts) and system development variables System development variables System goals Technical Use of TQM programs Technique oriented People oriented Perceived influence Understanding of TQM Core concepts Macro concepts Micro concepts
*

Design philosophy Social 0.20* 0.03 0.01 0.07 0.10 0.06 0.14* 0.05 0.12 0.06 0.11 0.10

User assumption

User participation

0.04 0.08 0.22* 0.15* 0.08 0.12

0.09 0.12 0.15* 0.07 0.03 0.04

0.04 0.10 0.20* 0.07 0.14* 0.04

Correlation is significant at 0.05% level.

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Fig. 3. Results of research question 2.

with social goals (e.g. increased quality of working life, increased job satisfaction, makes job easier, and increases skills of workers). Employees' perceived inuence on quality issues was found to have a positive correlation with the emphasis on technical goals. In addition, individuals' understanding of core TQM concepts was found to have a negative correlation with the perceived importance of technical goals. These results provide partial support for research question 2a suggesting that those organizations that are more TQM mature do appear to put more emphasis on people-oriented goals in their system development projects (see Fig. 3). Research question 2b states that TQM maturity affects the system design philosophy. Among the three dimensions of TQM maturity, the use of ``technique oriented'' TQM programs has a positive correlation with the design philosophy used for systems

development which implies that as TQM maturity increases, users report that a new computer system should give them more control, help them learn multiple skills, and help them work effectively with others. Individuals' perceived inuence on quality issues and their understanding of TQM concepts were found to have a positive, but not statistically signicant correlation with the design philosophy that would allow personal growth and help users work effectively with others. The results give some support for this research question in that where more technique oriented TQM programs are reported, there are more report of a design philosophy which empower users (see Fig. 3). The third part of research question 2 posits that TQM maturity affects the perceptions of system users. As shown in Table 6, the results indicate that the employees' perceived inuence on the quality issues is the only TQM maturity dimension that is positively

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associated with the perception on the part of the users that that they are responsible, creative, active, ability to work without close supervision, and the like. Company-wide TQM programs used and individuals' understanding of TQM concepts were found to have little correlation with the perceptions toward users (see Fig. 3). Research question 2d suggests that increased TQM maturity will give users more involvement in the systems development process. When the correlation between the user participation in the eight developmental activities and the three dimensions of TQM maturity were studied, two relations were found to be signicant. First, employees' perceived inuence on quality issues was found to have a positive correlation with their perceived participation in the systems development process. Second, individuals' understanding of ``macro'' TQM concepts was found to have a positive correlation with users' participation in systems development (see Fig. 3). The last research question concerns the relationships between organizational climate/culture and TQM maturity. We suggest that in order for TQM programs to be successful, the organization will need to move to a TQM supportive culture/climate. Of the four organizational climate factors, the ``reactive/ proactive'' factor and the ``individualistic/collectivistic'' factor have the strongest positive association with the three dimensions of TQM maturity (see Table 7). This implies that the more TQM mature organizations have more proactive and collaborative cultures. In addition, employees' perceived inuence on quality

issues was found to have a positive correlation with the ``centralized/decentralized'' climate. The result is consistent with the employee empowerment concept that the line personnel should be given the responsibility to control the quality issues in the work environment. The ``hard/soft'' climate, on the other hand, does not correlate with any of the TQM maturity dimensions (see Fig. 4). 9. Conclusions and discussion In this paper, we report results of an exploratory study of the relationships between TQM maturity and IS development. We began by contending that both TQM and IS have been proposed as vehicles for improving organizational efciency and productivity. Logically, synergies should result when the two approaches are used in concert. However, we proposed that ``being on'' TQM may not be sufcient, and that projected benets will be realized only when organizations grow in their qualitative use of TQM or, in this study's terms, in TQM maturity. We found that TQM maturity is multi-dimensional and could be measured along three dimensions: TQM program use, perceived inuence, and TQM understanding (see Fig. 2). We argue that when organizations become more TQM mature, more TQM programs will be used at different organizational levels, and individuals will report higher levels of inuence on quality issues and better understanding of TQM concepts. Overall, our results show very strong correlation among these factors.

Table 7 Correlation between TQM maturity (use of TQM programs, perceived influence, and understanding of TQM concepts) and organizational culture Organizational culture Reactive/proactive Use of TQM programs Technique oriented People oriented Perceived influence Understanding of TQM Core concepts Macro concepts Micro concepts
*

Hard/soft 0.13 0.12 0.03 0.09 0.07 0.02

Individualistic/collectivistic 0.03 0.29* 0.31* 0.03 0.14* 0.03

Centralized/decentralized 0.01 0.02 0.19* 0.10 0.11 0.02

0.17* 0.31* 0.16* 0.14* 0.13 0.16*

Correlation is significant at 0.05% level.

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Fig. 4. Results of research question 3.

Furthermore, factor analysis revealed that the TQM program use and understanding dimensions further reduced to several sub-factors. We next examined relationships between the factors comprising TQM maturity and users' perceptions about how IS has approached systems development (note, again, that our sample consisted of managers whose organizations had recently been involved in systems development and who, therefore, presumably had a reasonable basis for making judgments). Our guiding rationale was that, in more TQM Mature organizations, the TQM philosophy should be widely shared and incorporated into the way IS staff conducts its development activities. Fig. 3 shows support for the relationships we expected. Specically, we found that, in more TQM mature organizations, IS staff was perceived by users as more oriented toward social

goals (RQ2a), as emphasizing employee empowerment and self-learning (RQ2b), as making more positive assumptions about users (RQ2c), and as involving users more in systems development (RQ2d). Finally, we expected relationships between TQM maturity and a TQM-supportive culture. Our ndings provide considerable support for our ideas (see Fig. 4). As expected, in organizations which were more TQM mature, users reported a wide range of reactions which, taken as a whole, suggest that users perceived that more emphasis was placed on social (people-related) goals in IS development, and their relationship with IS staff was supportive, based upon respect, and participative. Moreover, we found that there is a relationship between TQM maturity and the perception that the organization has adopted a less rigid, more organic culture. The results verify the

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notion suggested by Tata and Prasad [46] that organizational culture affects the effectiveness of TQM programs. In another words, TQM mature organizations need a TQM-supportive culture in order for the programs to attain desirable outcomes. Despite the potential and signicance of TQM and IT on organizational effectiveness and performance, empirical studies that examine the impact of TQM on IS development are not widely reported in the quality or IS literature. This study, therefore, provides two signicant contributions. First, this study is one of the very few that empirically investigates the impact of TQM on IS development. Second, this study has overcome some of the methodological problems observed in earlier research by explicitly dening and measuring the levels of TQM adopted by an organization (TQM maturity). We suggest that this idea, therefore, then, can serve as a working denition of TQM implementation for future TQM studies. However, due to the exploratory nature of this study, there are several limitations. As noted, the 221 managers in the sample were from mostly low to medium TQM mature organizations. In order to fully examine the impact of TQM maturity, we need to actively seek out organizations with high levels of TQM maturity. In addition, we did not control for the characteristics of the IS projects. This could potentially be a problem because the urgency and the familiarity of a system project may affect how IS staff view the system users and how much user participation is considered to be appropriate.

Appendix A. Summary of key dimensions of research variables Total quality management variables  Use of TQM programs  Quality circle  Statistical quality control  Acceptance sampling  Employee's suggestions  Employee's quality training  Perceived influence/involvement on quality issues  Understanding of TQM techniques/concepts  Deming's 14-point of quality improvement, ISO 9000, Pareto diagram, etc. System development variables  System goals  Technical goals (e.g. work efficiency, reduce costs)  Social goals (e.g. increase job satisfaction and morale)  System design philosophy  Employee empowerment  Self-learning employees  MIS staff's assumptions about people/users  Responsible, creative, active, powerful, etc.  User participation Organizational variables  Organizational culture  Open, soft, collaborative, informal, participative, etc.

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Appendix B.

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Lillian Y. Fok is a Professor of Management at the University of New Orleans. She received her PhD degree from the Georgia State University. Her research interests include TQM, Information Systems, and Human Factor. Wing M. Fok is MBA Director and an Associate Professor at the Loyola University New Orleans. He received her PhD degree from the Georgia State University. Her research interests include Technology Management, Cross Cultural Management, Quality Management, Management Information system and Forecasting. Sandra J. Hartman is a Professor of Management at the University of New Orleans. She received her PhD from the Louisiana State University. Her teaching and research interests include Organization Behavior and Organization Theory with emphasis upon international issues in these areas.