Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Since the early 1980s, practitioners have attempted to influence academic institutions
to address the issue of quality implementation seriously, both in the classroom
setting and in research pursuits. Quality programmes have received a great deal
of attention in the popular press. However, academic researchers, especially in
the area of organizational behaviour, have been less than forthcoming in their
pursuit of the quality management paradigm. Research studies of the “quality
phenomenon” by organizational researchers have been noticeably scant.
The omission of the quality management paradigm in organizational behaviour
research represents a serious gap in our knowledge of how organizations function.
While some debate the longevity of the quality “fad”, the reality of quality
programmes exists to some degree in most major organizations in the USA.
Therefore, it is time to overcome this hurdle and address quality management
and its resultant impact on organizational behaviour. One way of doing this is
to redefine quality as a major determinant of organizational change.
The implementation of quality programmes often leads to major change within
an organization. Such change may be studied at a variety of levels. For example,
at the organizational level, the implementation of quality may represent a strategic
move to become more competitive. At the unit level, work units, or teams, are
sometimes created to fulfil quality goals. Many teams become empowered through
the quality paradigm. Individuals are also impacted by the change resulting from
the implementation of quality programmes. From top managers down through
the various levels of employees, the issue of resistance to change and the
institutionalization of quality concepts are key determinants of success. At all
levels, the successful implementation of a quality programme requires top
management commitment. It is apparent that when quality is viewed as a
determinant of organizational change, the research opportunities are profound.
In order to see how research on quality relates to organizational research, it is
helpful to understand the evolution of the quality management paradigm and
also the seeming lethargy of academics in acknowledging its importance. The
following discussion will address this issue. It first provides an overview of the
quality construct by considering quality as a major determinant of organizational
change. With this perspective, three issues inherent in quality programmes are
outlined and discussed. These issues are carried forward further in five very
interesting articles in this special edition of the Journal of Organizational Change
Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Management, Vol. 7 No. 2, 1994,
pp. 6-14. © MCB University Press,
The title of this issue is “Quality Management and the Process of Change”.
0953-4814 Our hope is that this sampling of quality management research, both conceptual
and empirical, will focus your attention on the magnitude as well as the profound Quality
relevance of organizational research possibilities within the quality management Management
paradigm. Such research is needed to show the relationship between quality
management programmes and organizational behaviour and change. This
information has great value both for those practitioners trying to implement
quality programmes and for those researchers trying to focus their efforts on the
most relevant issues in their organizational research. 7
Development of the Quality Management Paradigm
Given the popularity of quality programmes in organizations today, one would
anticipate that research on quality would be quite prolific. However, for a variety
of reasons, this is not the case. One important reason is the origin of the quality
construct. Study in the area of quality management has taken a very convoluted
path, when observed from a research perspective. The foundations of quality
management were laid by Deming (1986), Juran (1988), Crosby (1984) and others
who advocated the use of statistics to control variation in the manufacturing
process. This approach was expanded to address improvement issues in other
areas of the organization. These quality “gurus” have been prolific in writing
how-to books in improving quality. Consulting groups have sprung up nationwide
to facilitate the implementation of quality programmes. The Malcolm Baldrige
National Quality Award, with its specific criteria for evaluating organizational
quality, has been used as a guideline for many organizations.
This evolution is not typical of a traditional organizational research issue. As
a result, many organizational researchers have ignored the behavioural side of
the quality phenomenon. Since quality was first studied via statistical control of
the manufacturing process, its study was relegated primarily to those in operations
research. Operations researchers have provided some valuable insights into the
degree of implementation of quality programmes (Ebrahimpour, 1988; Modaress
and Ansari, 1989; Ross and Georgoff, 1991), as well as some instrument and
theory development (see the works of Sakakibara et al., 1990 and Saraph et al.,
1989, for good examples). However, the issues of organizational behaviour (for
example, top management commitment and the impact of organizational change)
receive only cursory attention in this research.
Increased interest in the quality management paradigm is developing in the
academic community. At the National Meetings of the Academy of Management,
many researchers met to discuss their work in the area of quality management
(TQM Caucuses, 1992; 1993). However, several individuals admitted to having
removed the term “quality” from their manuscripts, in order to be considered for
publication in the major management journals. This is one more indication that
quality management has yet to be accepted and respected as being worthy of
organizational behaviour research.
Resistance to Change
It is well known that people are, for the most part, resistant to change of any
sort. This is especially true in the case of transformational change. In organizations,
many factors come into play, such as fear of the unknown, habit, the possibility
of economic insecurity, threats to social relationships, and failure to recognize
the need for change (Nadler, 1988). Such reasons will result in change that is
ultimately stamped out and equilibrium returned, unless organization leaders
step in to facilitate acceptance of the change.
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