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Keywords
Total quality management, Quality culture, Awards, Quality, USA, Japan
Abstract
Japanese and US organizations, in their strivings to achieve organizational and quality excellence, differ significantly in various aspects of management and work culture. Spiritual teachings, such as Shintoism and Buddhism, have shaped the Japanese people's concept of human relations and management philosophy. The West, on the other hand, highly advocates freedom and creative thinking, and has created competitiveness through fostering a culture of entrepreneurship. The US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the Japanese Deming Prize, and the Japan Quality Award, contain in their frameworks several total quality management (TQM) concepts, including: leadership and social responsibilities, strategies and plans, customer focus/relations, human resource development, information management, processes, quality, suppliers, and overall results. This article compares the distinctive differences and overlapping concepts between the US and Japanese approach to TQM, with regard to the countries' quality award frameworks and criteria.
Introduction
Japanese and US business organizations have been observed to display various differences in their approach to implementing total quality management (TQM). These differences are due to historical antecedents and socio-cultural factors. Japanese workers are regarded as well disciplined, loyal to their leaders and, above all, team-oriented. Also, great importance is placed on harmony within the workplace as well as in human relations (Mak, 2000). American culture, on the other hand, embraces autonomy, freedom, and individual rights (Damanpour, 1998). This has led to great achievement in terms of innovativeness, creativity, and technological advancements (De Vries, 1996). The dissimilarities of socio-cultural factors between the two countries have resulted in different approaches to managing business organizations (Maccoby, 1994). Culture-- related factors are important for implementing TQM, because, on top of having to establish a quality system, a quality culture is required for sustaining the practice (Mak, 1999).
The article aims to highlight the distinctive differences and overlapping core concepts between the US and Japanese approaches to TQM, with regard to the countries' quality award frameworks and criteria. The comparison will serve three purposes: discussing how culture-related values, practiced long ago, play a significant role in modern day-to-day management; highlighting the strengths and weaknesses across two continents (East-West) in their TQM practices; and providing characterizations of "typical" US and Japanese organizations, so that a better...