Content area
Full text
Key Words
quality, model, criteria
Summary
This paper outlines some of the key considerations for the selection and implementation of quality management models in organizations.
Introduction
A crucial challenge that all quality practitioners face is establishing why a quality initiative is needed. Once that issue is resolved, the focus needs to be on what a quality approach means. For the most part, managers have little experience in this type of management approach. Most have built successful careers doing things with a traditional top-down approach using a "shoot from the hip" approach with the manager as the "all knowing" leader. In order to implement quality, many managers may have to change how they think about managing. The requisite changes are substantial.
Rolf Smith (1997) suggests that seven levels of change exist and examination of this provides a suitable starting point when setting the stage for implementing and deploying a quality approach. Change on any level, according to Smith, is associated with changing how one thinks about thinking. Change requires a mind shift and this mind shift is more difficult at the higher levels of the change ladder. Depending on a variety of factors, this mindshift offers varying degrees of difficulty and opportunity.
Peter Senge (1990) suggests five disciplines require our attention. Each of the disciplines plays an integral part in creating an organization capable of surviving in our tumultuous times. Each also provides a key element in implementing a quality approach to managing any organization which according to Ho (1999), may provide the basis for creating a Total Learning Organization.
Taken together, these two perspectives suggest that success in implementing quality and deploying it in the organization can be enhanced by the judicious use of models as tools for creating the mental mindset - the thinking about how the organization can operate effectively required for successfully establishing and maintaining quality. This applies equally to the large organizational items as well the tools and techniques of the quality.
The purpose of this paper is to indicate how the use and selection of a model can aid in implementing a quality approach in an organization. It does not prescribe a model but rather suggest that the process for selecting and applying the model is part...