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Keywords
Partnership, Internal customers, Dialogue, Communication, Trust
Abstract
An often-discussed issue in the total quality management (TQM) philosophy is how to improve internal customer commitment. To find answers one must look at what the actual commitment is based on. Which decisive factors are contributing and how are they connected? As an employer one is not only employing just one part of a person but the whole person with personal, social and professional qualities. Many employers do follow "checklists" regarding how to deal with human resource issues, but they often do not really understand the content in the suggested questions of the checklist. This paper will include issues from social and behaviour sciences to enter deeper in the TQM philosophy and system thinking concerning co-workers' commitment. The purpose is to try to stimulate the debate using internal partnership as one way to attain increased commitment of co-workers. A model will be used to view decisive factors for partnership, all depending on communication. In this paper the term "partnership with internal customers" will be used to stress the necessary mutual agreement between employers and co-workers that are needed.
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Introduction
The concept of partnership is a holistic view, usually based on system thinking, and has been adopted into modern management. Partnership can be used to find win-win situations with suppliers, external customers and other organisations. An often-discussed issue in TQM philosophy is how to stimulate co-worker commitment, but this is not usually described in a partnership context. Although the concept of partnership has been successfully used in many other contexts, partnership between organisation and co-workers seems to be a somewhat disregarded area. A win-win situation is the base of partnership and should have the same relevance when including co-workers. A successful partnership should confirm the sense of unity and remove "we and them thinking"; this will also support a long-term perspective. Bergman and Klefsjö (2001) emphasize that TQM needs to clarify the importance of making all stakeholders of the organisation winners in the long run. The purpose of partnership is to change outside control of people by management into inside...