ABSTRACT
Total quality management, which is the practice of
striving fore customer satisfaction by ensuring quality from all departments in
an organization deals mainly with top management commitments and employees
involvement. Top management trying to make the employees part of the processes
and getting them involved in the quality programme to achieve customer
satisfaction. This work tries to find out if total quality management improves
organizations performance and also to know how organization perceives total
quality management as a management strategy. In finding out the answers to the
above, the researcher used simple percentages and chi square in analyzing the
questionnaires given, it was found out that through the implementation of total
quality management in an organization its performance will be highly improved
in that TQM involves the involvement of all the members of an organization working
towards a definite aim and it will in no doubt improve the organizations
performance. To that effect the research recommends that to improve corporate
performance through the implementation of TQM, that delegation of power and
authority to influence the way in which training provision is organized and
facilitated. This will encourage employees to set their own quality goals which
will be easily attainable.
CHAPTER ONE
1.1 BACKGROUND
OF STUDY
Experience has shown that
consumers of goods and services are becoming more sensitive to product quality
more than before and as a result, producers cannot afford to take for granted
the issue of quality which itself is a function of good performance. Corporations
produced to sell and make maximum profit irrespective of consumers taste and
style. For instance, bank consumer expects efficient, quick and courteous
service from his banker and readers of newspaper anticipates clarity of
production, grammatical soundness and dept of news coverage from the editor.
Likewise consumer of manufacturing products expects high reliability and
effectiveness of the products manufactured from that industry.
It is therefore not enough to
meet specification, but also meet all the quality the customer expects from the
product. In this context therefore, quality means “Total or Complete quality”.
That is a customer is able to get the right quality and quantity of goods and
services at the right time. All these should be achieved at first
attempt and not when patronage is repeated on several occasions.
Total Quality Management
according to Nwachukwu C.C. (2006) are set of principles and
practices whose core idea include understanding customer needs, doing
things right the first time and striving for continuous improvement. It is a
management approach which is aimed at incorporating awareness of quality in all
organizational processes.
Many organization are
striving for quality products and services that will meet or exceed customers
expectations and as a result of this, they are searching for approaches to
manage people and production system that will assure that transformation of
inputs into quality output.
In comparing the performance
of public and private enterprise, there exists a general understanding that
public enterprise in both developed and developing countries have performed
below expectation it has been argued that excessive political interference and
bureaucratic failure are responsible mainly for the inefficiency associated
with public sector. To salvage this, the privatizations and commercialization exercises come into being.
Hence poor performance resulting in the inability to perform, failure to meet
customer expectation and inability to meet target result, shareholders demand
and there social responsibilities. They can be readily discovered using various
operational techniques especially as it relates to the various inputs into the
production.
So in achieving greater
performance, the concept of Total Quality Management is the tool since Total
Quality Management involves people and system working harmoniously for the
benefit of the customers, the achievement of corporate goals and enhancement of
workers quality of life.
But Hills (2003) on
the other hand emphasizes that if there is lack of commitment from top
management then TQM cannot be implemented in its entirely and also stress the
fact that the support that management takes in implementing a total quality
environment is very critical to the success of the Total Quality Management
Implement.
Total Quality Management is a
management approach which is aimed at incorporating awareness of quality in all
organizational processes. Many organization are striving for quality products
and services that will meet or exceed customers expectation and as a result of
this they are searching for approaches to managing people and production system
that will assure the transformation of inputs into quality output.
Much research has been done
with regards to the implementation of total quality management. Pheng and
Jasmine (2004) pointed out that with the adoption of TQM there is
the benefits of higher customer satisfaction, better quality products and
higher market shares. Customer satisfaction is one of the prime objectives of
TQM and it is the most widely discussed approach to directing organizational
efforts towards the goal of customer satisfaction.
According to Hills (1991)
TQM theory is
based on:
continuous improvement,
top management leadership
and commitment to the goal of
customer satisfaction, employee empowerment and customer focus.
With the full adoption and
implementation of TQM, there should be a turn around in corporate culture and
management approaches as compared to the traditional way of management in which
the top management giving orders and employees merely obeying them.
TQM is generally perceived to
emphasize employee empowerment and de-emphasize states distinction in an
organization.
An TQM organization is
basically a customer oriented organization and the organization should strive
to maximize customer satisfaction rather than internal efficiency and that each
person within the organization should consider the need of the next person in
line who uses its output.
The quality scholars have
indicated that primarily the employees build quality into an organization’s
goods and services. Hence the quality of products and services depends heavily
on employee empowerment, participation, morale, motivation, compensation. It is
believed that motivational theories when properly
developed cause quality initiatives to be successful. While others do not. Some
of the motivational theories in context are content theory, Expectancy theory,
Behaviour modification theory, Goal Setting theory, Equity theory and job
Design theory. The researcher shall devote the cause of this research work on
Goal Setting and Expectancy theory because if properly developed, are most
likely to bring success to quality initiatives.
GOAL SETTING THEORY: The theory
was proposed by psychologist Edwin Locke, he says that the
natural human inclination to set and strive for goal is useful only if the
individual both understand and accepts a particular goal. He further states
that individuals are motivated when he behave in ways that move them to certain
clear goals that they accept and can reasonably expect to attain.
Stoner (2007) describes
Goals Setting as a process theory of motivation that focus on the
process of setting goals.
C. Earley and C. Shalley
(2000) as edited by Stoner (2007) describes the goal
setting process in terms of four phases of a person’s reasoning.
2.
Evaluation of whether the standard
can be achieved
3.
Evaluation of whether the standard
matches personal goals
4.
The standard is accepted, the goal
is thereby set and behaviour proceeds towards the goal.
Edwin Lock also
proposed that intention to work towards a goal are a major source of
work motivation. That is, goal tell an employee what needs to be done and how
much efforts will need to be done and how much efforts will need to be
expended. We can also easily say that specific goals increase performance; that
difficult goals when accepted result in higher performance than easy goals.
Goal commitment is most
likely to occur when goals are made public, when the employee has an internal
locus of control, and when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.
It is also believed that
goals seems to have a more substantial effect on performance when tasks are
simple rather than complex, well learned rather than novel.
EXPECTANCY
THEORY: This was propounded by Victor Vroom.
Expectancy theory argue that the strength of a tendency to act in a
certain way depends on the strength of an expectation that the act will be
followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the
individual.
Stonner (2007) States
that it is a theory of motivation that says that people choose how to
behave from among alternative course of behaviour based on their expectation of
what there is to gain from each behaviour. The strength of a tendency to act in
certain way depends in the strength of an expectation that an act will be
followed by a given outcome and on the attractiveness of the outcome to the
individual.
Robbins S. and Sanghi S.
(2008) says that employee will be motivated to exert a
high level of effort when they believe that effort will lead to a good
performance appraisal; that a good appraisal will lead to organizational reward
such as a bonus, a salary increase or a promotion and that the reward will
satisfy the employees personal goals and on the organizational side will bring
for a better corporate performance by the employee.
David
Nadler and Edward Lawler describe four assumption
about behaviour in organization as edited by Stonner (2007) on which
expectancy approach is based.
1.
Behaviour is determined by a
combination of factors in the individual and factors in the environment
2.
Individuals make conscious
decisions about their behaviour in the organization.
3.
Individual have different needs,
desire and goals.
4.
Individual decide between
alternative behaviours on the basis of their expectations that a given
behaviour will lead to a desired outcome.
1.3 STATEMENT
OF PROBLEM
The statement of problems in
this study is to describe the processes involved in the implementation of Total
Quality Management in an organization.
This study will also
investigation if Total Quality Management improves organizational performance.
This study will also
investigate if organization that have implemented Total Quality Management
involves itself in continuous improvement of her
products on the basis of understanding customer needs and wants.
From this research investigation,
some suggestion will be made on how to improve Total Quality application in
some business organization.
1.4 THE OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
The
objectives of the study involved the following
A
To find out if Total Quality
Management improves organizations performance
B
To find out how organizations
perceives Total Quality Management as a management strategy.
C
To access the performance of
organizations that implemented Total Quality Management strategy and also to
access Total Quality Management as a future strategy for implementing
improvement strategy for organizational performance.
1.5 HYPOTHESIS
1.
There is no significant
relationship between Total Quality Management and organization performance.
2.
There is no significant
relationship between continuous improvement in services and organizational
performance.
3.
There is no significant
relationship between the strategic behaviour of the General Management and
organization performance.
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Item Type: Project Material | Size: 94 pages | Chapters: 1-5
Format: MS Word | Delivery: Within 30Mins.
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