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Why Total Quality Management Programs Do Not Persist: The Role of Management Quality and Implications for Leading a TQM Transformation

Item

Title
Why Total Quality Management Programs Do Not Persist: The Role of Management Quality and Implications for Leading a TQM Transformation
Abstract/Description
Top-down total quality management (TQM) programs often fail to create deep and sustained change in organizations. They become a fad soon replaced by another fad. Failure to institutionalize TQM can be attributed to a gap between top management's rhetoric about their intentions for TQM and the reality of implementation in various subunits of the organization. The gap varies from subunit to subunit due to the quality of management in each. By quality of management is meant the capacity of senior team to (1) develop commitment to the new TQM direction and behave and make decisions that are consistent with it, (2) develop the cross-functional mechanisms, leadership skills, and team culture needed for TQM implementation, and (3) create a climate of open dialogues about progress in the TQM transformation that will enable learning and further change. The TQM transformations will persist only if top management requires and ultimately institutionalizes an honest organizational-wide conversation that surfaces valid data about the quality of management in each subunit of the firm and leads to changes in management quality or replacement of managers.
Author/creator
Date
2003
In publication
Decision Sciences
Volume
34
Issue
4
Pages
623-642
Resource type
en
Resource status/form
en
Scholarship genre
en
en
Language
en
Open access/full-text available
en No
Peer reviewed
en Yes
ISSN
1540-5915
Citation
Beer, M. (2003). Why Total Quality Management Programs Do Not Persist: The Role of Management Quality and Implications for Leading a TQM Transformation. Decision Sciences, 34(4), 623–642. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5414.2003.02640.x

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