Quality System for Business Excellence - Coursework Example

QUALITY SYSTEM FOR BUSINESS EXCELLENCE Although business practices and their various contexts may change, basic management policies, techniques, and practices will not change Your name: ………………………………………… College : ……………………………………….. Date : ……………………………………….. Introduction When compared with the momentous changes that occurred over the past half century in the technology, lifestyles and geopolitics, the management seems to have evolved at a Snail’s pace (Hamel and Breen, 2007, p. 4). The changes in the technology cause changes in the way the business is carried out, but the basic principles and practices of management have not changed accordingly. This piece of research work is an attempt to describe that the basic management policies and techniques will not change even though there are tremendous changes in the technology and the business contexts. This paper presents a detailed analysis on why management basics don’t change in relation to different business perspectives like quality system, knowledge, organizational learning and innovation. Business and contexts are ever-changing, but management principles don’t change According to Bateman and Snell (2003), management is the process by which managers work with people and resources in order to accomplish set goals of the organization effectively and efficiently. Effectiveness refers to achieving organizational goals and efficiency is to achieve goals with minimal waste of resources by making best possible use of money, time, materials and people (p. 14). Basically, management is the process of managing the resources of an organization, and it is possible that different organizations follow different management styles. But still, the basic management principles seem to be same. Some managers are very effective but some others are not. Some managers become highly efficient because of the tactics and tools they use and same time some others fail in their management. As Bateman and Snell (2003) argued, no manager is always right or always wrong, but some get it on right path more often than some other managers (p. 6). Management process is comprised of the very basic four elements of planning and strategizing, organizing, leading and controlling and decision making (Gomez, Mejia and Balkin, 2002, p. 5). These basic elements are typically more prominent at almost all organizational levels and these are widely used by all managers worldwide. Smit (2007) emphasizes that the fundamental functions of a manager link up in a specific sequence to form a process. Management includes a number of processes in a logical sequence of actions (p. 8). Management process comprised of four management functions (Smit, 2007, p. 8) All the managers are most likely to engage with all these basic functions of the management including planning, controlling and leading, but, the way the managers perceive these functions and apply in different occasions can be different in organizations. The managers basically manage resources like human resources, financial or knowledge resources and they work for achieving the set goals through various managerial functions. Even when the technology brings greater changes in the organization or business activities face different contexts due to changing consumer attitude, the management styles may change but managers are still performing the fundamental functions in the logical sequence. The basic principles and practices never change. More specifically, when managers face ‘changes’ within the organization, it doesn’t mean that they will do different functions instead of planning and controlling. ‘Management’ has much provided fuels to the modern inventions and technologies. The techniques, principles and practices of management only paved the way to the technology breakthrough like advanced communication facilities of mobile phones or microprocessors. ‘Management’ and its modern practices have provided greater achievements of ‘changes’ through technological advancements. If management practices can bring changes through technological breakthrough, it must be able to manage the changes as well. Management and Concepts of Quality System The ‘quality system’ concept in both management and business has increased dramatically in recent years. It is a management strategy to adapt to the changes in technologies and consumer demands. One of the fundamental objectives and goals of management is to achieve quality. According to Peter Drucker, the purpose of a business is to create a customer-that is to satisfy the customer by providing some product or service that he wants (Burril and Ledolter, 1999, p. 8). According to Bateman and Snell (2003), quality in the management and in the business refers to providing excellence of the product including its attractiveness, lack of defects, reliability and long term dependability (p. 12). The father of Quality system W. Edward Deming has developed a quality management system emphasizing ‘joy at work’. According to him, quality should be stressed at each and every steps of the processes, and not just by inspecting the product or service to be offered once its production is completed. He holds that most of problems in products and services are resulted from the faults in management (Gitlow, 2001, p. 2). The management aims at achieving quality in the product and services being offered to the customers and therefore managers are taking measures to improve the quality in almost all the managerial processes within the organization. In the ever changing business atmosphere, quality becomes more relevant and management becomes extremely serious about achieving quality in the management. When business contexts change and customers become more ‘quality driven’, the basic practices of management don’t change and instead management seeks to improve the efficiency in its processes. According to Nanda (2005) quality comprises of all activities that are required to plan for achieving quality in an organization and all those activities that are required to satisfy quality objectives (p. 8). The quality management system comprises of four basic elements that are quality planning, control, assurance and improvement. In the changing business contexts, achieving quality has become highly important. In order to achieve quality, these basic elements should function accordingly. As stated earlier, the style of applying management theories may be different in organizations, but all these basics don’t change. ‘Make it easy for customers’ is a strategy for service quality. Fedex and Dell make it easy for customers. Some companies concentrate on ‘customizing’ option for customers in order improve the quality of goods and services. These show that businesses take various strategies to achieve quality in their business, but the basic principles of management don’t change because, they use all the managerial techniques to obtain the strategies and also to update the strategies according to the changing need of customers. Management and Concept of Knowledge Management is the process of managing resources. Knowledge is one of the most valuable resources as well as intangible asset. Knowledge management is a newly emerging interdisciplinary business and management model that focuses on knowledge within the organizational framework (Awad and Ghaziri, 2007. P. 26). According to Noe (2002), knowledge management is the process by which business performance can be enhanced by designing and implementing tools, processes, systems, cultures and structures so that creation, sharing and use of the knowledge can be improved (p. 168). Knowledge creation, sharing of it and use of this for the overall benefits of the organization are the basic three dimensions of knowledge management. All the businesses give greater emphasis on managing its knowledge and to use these valuable resources for the employee development and knowledge improvement. It was found that more knowledgeable and experienced workers are more productive than others. When business contexts change due to technological or other changes, different firms may use different tactics to manage its knowledge resources, but the basic principles and practices are not changing. The basic dimensions of knowledge management- knowledge creation, sharing and using, will be carried out in almost all the organization with aids of varying tools, strategies and methodologies. Some organizations use ‘teamwork’ as a strategy to enhance knowledge share among its employees. According to Austin and Claassen (2008), teamwork is an inevitable component of organizational culture which can help improve knowledge share among the employees. Teamwork involves workers’ ability and expertise in working together through assessing team skills related to trust among them (p. 378). Noe (2002) identified mentoring and coaching as two interpersonal relationships that can enhance knowledge share (p. 303). Levoy (2006) identified Alumni Relation as a strategy for managing knowledge. By conducting ‘get together’ of older employees who have stayed longer in the organization can help improve knowledge share and knowledge transfer from older and experienced to new employees (p. 27). Jackson and Hitt (2003) suggested that rewards and recognition are most powerful tools for motivation and thus to enhance knowledge share among the workers (p. 417). There can be different strategies to be implemented in order to create, share and use knowledge like teamwork, collaboration, alumni relation, reward and recognition etc, but the basic dimensions of knowledge management are same and are not different from firm to firm. The basic practices may not change. Some organizations may go for reward and recognition option while some other management gives emphasis on teamwork and collaboration for knowledge management. Recently, retaining older workforce has become gained attention of management as strategic step forward to improve knowledge of workers and also for managing the knowledge base in the organization. Weber (2009) pointed out that there has been a dramatic change in the last few years that a large number of older workers have been retained and many young workers have been cut from their jobs. Bureau of Labor Statistics has found that the number of people aged more than 55 with jobs have risen to nearly 900,000 from the starting of the recent economic turmoil. Workers between 25 and 54 lost around 2.9 million jobs (EBSCO). This shows that management depends on various strategies at different times. Changes in business contexts can cause changes in the way the management practices are carried out, but still, the basics may not change. Many organizations embraced the strategy of ‘retaining older workers’ to improve knowledge management. The basic principle behind this was to enhance ‘knowledge creation, knowledge share and use of knowledge for the overall benefits of the businesses’. Due to the economic recession, many organizations had to cut jobs, and they preferred older employees to be retained because they are more skilled, more experienced and more knowledgeable. Management and Concept of Organizational Learning Organizational Learning is another management strategy to adapt to the changing business contexts caused by technology changes and consumer behavior changes. It has been embraced by a number of large organizations like IBM as a strategy to create a learning atmosphere within the organization so that knowledge can be acquired, created and organized. According to OECD, organizational learning refers to those methods the firms acquire, create and organize knowledge and routines around their core competencies and thus to adapt organizational efficiency through improving the use of its core competencies (p. 302). Organizational learning is a strategic step of management towards achieving business goals of gaining efficiency and effectiveness. Managers use different strategies like organizational learning in order to bring both efficiency and effectiveness within the organization, but, the basics don’t change. One of the fundamental principle of management is to achieve both efficiency and effectiveness in its operations. Learning organization is based on the basic principles of management and same time it is a strategy designed to cope with the changing business contexts. According to Dixon (1999), knowledge that we create through learning allows us to change our environment, may be by reframing it or physically altering it or by both. Thus learning and change reinforce each other. The faster the change, the more new knowledge we will create to deal with the change. the more knowledge we create, the faster we change our business environment (p. 3) Management and the concept of Innovation According to Ulrich (2005), innovation focuses on share of opportunity by creating future success instead of relying success which is achieved in the past (p. 80). Innovation is a forward looking process. Innovation in management is designed to foster growth and it motivates employees as it provides better working environment. Implementing a strategy for appropriating the gains from innovation is critical in taking a successful technological innovation (Winter, 2000, p. 242) According to Dodgson (2000), managing research and development is highly important because there can be a number of issues due to the changing techniques of technology and these to be forecasted by the management (p. 2). Management of technology, management of processes and operation, management of information system and management various strategies are more common components of management innovation. Management innovation is thus a strategy to adapt the changes of technology. In this changing business contexts as well, the basics of management don’t change because, the basic functions and elements like planning, organizing, directing, controlling and coordinating are always imperative in any managerial actions, no matter whether it is information system management or technology or research management. Conclusion The business contexts and specifics of management are facing radical change but there are still a large number of management principles and techniques that make great managers. This work presents a detailed analysis on the relevance of management principles even in the changing business contexts with relation to quality system, knowledge, learning organization and innovation. References Awad E.M and Ghaziri H.M (2007), Knowledge Management, Pearson Education India Austin M.J and Claassen J (2008), Knowledge Management: Implications for Human Service Organizations, The Haworth Press, Retrieved from http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.apollolibrary.com Bateman T.S and Snell S.A. 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