Total Quality Management, Intellectual Property, Company Innovations - Assignment Example

Student’s name Institution Course Professor Date QUESTION 1 TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT Total quality management (TQM) is management approach or philosophy that originated in 1950’s and it has gained much popularity since early 1980’s. “Total Quality Management (TQM) is a continuous set of mindset that keeps on improvement processes for individuals, groups and whole organizations by understanding and discovering better process.” (Poonsook Janpen 2005) It mainly entails the organisation culture, attitude and its organisation to deliver to consumers’ services and products that effectively satisfy their needs. Successful implementation of TQM entails the concentration on effective implementation of the following key elements: ethics, integrity, trust, training, teamwork, leadership, recognition and communication. These elements collectively help in the implementation of total quality management in organisations. Ethics in the organisations entails the principles and values in it that are concern with distinguishing between what is considered good or bad in any situation. Ethics in organisation involves both the organisation ethics and individual ethics. Organisation ethics outlines the guidelines that all employees in the organisation must adhere to in the performance of their work. They guide all employees to perform their duties according to set code of conduct and professionalism. Individual ethics involves personal rights and wrongs in the organisation. Promotion of ethical conduct in the organisation promotes the realisation of improved productivity since employees will adhere to production standards and minimal unethical behaviours are realised since employees knows what is expected of them. Ethics is considered as one of the foundations of TQM. It contributes to the building of openness, fairness and sincerity in the organisation. “Firms with strong comprehensive culture implement highly the TQM elements of top management leadership, people, process, customer and supplier management. Firms with clan-driven culture implement highly the element of process management while firms with hierarchy-driven and weak comprehensive culture implement lowly to moderately all elements. A culture-based TQM implementation strategy is proposed.” (Koh Tas Yong, Mar 2008, Vol. 26 Issue 3) Ethics is very essential in the functioning of this university. Ethics enables the smooth running of the university since the various stakeholders know what is good and bad when performing or under different situations. The students, teachers and all the other stakeholders are guided by ethical set standards. Ethics among the students for instance ensures there is discipline in the university while the lecturers are ethically responsible to perform their duties. Ethics is very essential in the achievement of high standards of education in the university thus promoting service delivery. Integrity implies honesty, values, morals, fairness and compliance to sincerity and facts. In implementation of TQM, the organisation must have integrity to its customers in terms of service and product delivery. Customers must get what they deserve to receive. Integrity among the organisation members is one of the driving forces of TQM. Integrity workers will be sincere in performance and their productivity. This contributes to improvement of quality of goods since employees will strive to work under stipulated standards and productivity levels. Integrity is important in improving education levels in this university. Integrity in this university is an all round principle. Students, lecturers and other university working staff must have integrity for total quality management to be effective. Students must have integrity in their studies for instance performance of their assignments, projects and exams. Lecturers must be sincere in their duties and teaching in order for them to deliver quality services to students. Trust can be taken as a by-product of ethical conduct and integrity. Trust creates faithfulness in organisation. It creates and fosters full participation of all organisation members in the realisation of the objectives of the organisation. Having faith and trust in the organisation promotes member commitment, decision making, individual risk taking at different levels of the organisation. This avoids ill intentions and mistrust in the organisation. By so it builds necessary cooperative environment essential for TQM. Trust, integrity and ethical conduct are considered as the foundation of TQM. They are key to unlocking the ultimate potential of TQM. Trust is essential among the various stakeholders in this university. With trust the university management is able to delegate work and have various levels of workers performing different functions with the ultimate aim of service delivery to the students. Trust creation in combination with integrity and ethical conduct of various stakeholders’ aid in ensuring that improved service delivery to students and the society is improved. Training is very crucial in improving productivity of workers. All kind of workers starting from the subordinate to the management levels should be offered either training or employee development programs to improve productivity and service delivery. Employees requires different training that gives them interpersonal skills, team work skills, problem solving skills, job performance analysis and improvement , decision making, technical skills among other skills. Training makes them to be more responsible, creative and innovative, reduce wastages and resource misuse, to communicate effectively and be faster in production. Training and employee development should be continuous processes in the organisation in order to ensure workers implement various programs that ain realisation of total quality management. As a learning institution, this university requires continuous training of its staff in order to cope with the changing technological environment. Training offers the workers more or new skills, knowledge and experience on performance of duties. Continuous training in the university is very important since more informed workers and lecturers are required in order to be able to pass the knowledge to the students. It will be of low quality for poorly trained staff and lecturers to be given the mandate of educating the students. Teamwork is not only necessary for TQM but for the realisation of all the objectives of the organisation. TQM requires both the individual functionality and teamwork functioning. Team work is essential at different levels for instance within a department, interdepartmental and the general organisation. According to Barrie (2007), Teams in a kaizen environment could develop the culture of total quality through building collective responsibility and develop a sense of ownership, provide additional communication channels between individuals, management, customers and suppliers, develop problem solving skills and facilitate awareness of quality improvement potential, leading to behavioural and attitude change. Quality cycles, quality improvement or excellence teams, problem solving teams and natural working teams are necessary in effective TQM implementation. Universities require teamwork at all levels to aid knowledge sharing and research. Students must having group studies to help in undertaking research activities while lecturers must work in teams in order to exchange and share knowledge. Leadership is the most important element of TQM since it guides and manages the rest of the elements. It should be able to provide inspiring vision, strategic directions that are well understood and instil guiding values. TQM programme as to be lead by the top management of the organisation. The supervisor must be well informed about it, have commitment and personal involvement and belief in it in order to guide his or her followers. They should be able to provide direction, focus and clarity to the followers. Poor leadership and management of TQM results no achievement in its implementation. The university as an organisation must have good leadership and management of its TQM programs in order to be successful. Good leadership and management of university TQM in many occasions has seen successful quality improvement. Projects, studies, research are easily implemented through good leadership and management in the university. Effective communication among the various stakeholders is essential for its implementation. Communication is like a binder that brings together all things and people in its implementation. There is need for effective communication between organisation members, suppliers and customers. Various forms of communication like upwards, down wards, sideways are required at different stages of TQM implementation. For TQM implementation to be successful in this university communication is very essential among various stakeholders. Effective communication creates understanding among the stakeholders, enables teamwork and understanding in the implementation. The last key element of TQM is the recognition of achievements and suggestions by employees in the implementation of TQR. Recognition may be in terms of promotions, pay rise, monetary and no-monetary rewards among other means. Recognition should be both at the individual and group level. Recognition encourages high productivity, creates self-esteem, high quality and motivates workers towards achievement of set goals and objectives. Recognition in the university improves quality service delivery since it is part of motivation of workers, students and lecturers. QUESTION 2 Intellectual property Intellectual property has similar characteristics with personal or real property, associated rights makes it treated as assets that can be sold, bought, licensed or given out free of charge. Intellectual property laws enable owners, creators and investors to safeguard their property from unauthorized uses (U. S. Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs, 2006). Some of key laws of protecting intellectual property are those dealing with patents, copyrights, trade secrets and trademarks. Use of these forms helps companies to protect their property against theft, misuse, copying and forgery by other companies and competitors. Copyrights are the economic rights given to initiators and creators of artistic and literary work. It includes the right over reproduction of the work, making copies and performing or displaying the work publicly, (Bouchoux, 2009). Copyrights offer required protection for different forms of companies and individuals. In the entertainment industry, for instance copyrights offers protection over music produced, films, poems, artists and creators expressions. Copyrights discourage unauthorized reproduction of such material. Copyrights are also used in the academic field to protect individual work and research. Books, novels, publications and ideas in many occasions have copyrights that protect their reproduction and use. The same also protect architectural designs, computer programs and sound recordings. Protection of these materials and work promotes creativity, innovation and investment in the economy. Each company is encouraged to work hard to be more competitive than the rest. Patents give inventors exclusive means and rights of preventing others from using, making or selling an invention for a certain period. It acts as a contract between the whole society and individual inventor. Patent protection encourages inventions and emergence of new products, (Jaina and Jain, 2011). It has enabled companies to have courage in investing in technological innovations since they know that their products will not be duplicated. Patents are too hard to obtain since the inventor must proof that it is very new invention and not commonly available to ordinary citizens. Applicants must negotiate appropriate claims of defensive scope. Absence of patents means companies depend on secrecy that is hard to maintain. Examples of patents include a patent granted to Open Port Technology Company for least-cost routing (LCR) technology. This technology reduces the cost of routing messages over the internet. California Institute of technology have patents for creation of Rovers and has licensed their image to toymaker Lego for commercial use. Majority of vehicle manufacturing companies have patents over manufacturing of certain kinds of vehicles. Patents in the 21st century have enhanced competitiveness and innovation among different forms of industries and companies and this has lead to the emergence of wide range of products. Trade secrets are any form of information that is useful in the operations of business and that is sufficiently valuable to provide actual or potential economic advantage. Examples of trade secrets are formulas for production of the organisation products, compilations of information providing the business with competitive advantage, advertising strategies and distribution processes among other forms of information. The company in its own through restricting accesses to premises and documents, educating employees, normally protects trade secrets. The biggest example of trade secret in the world is the coca-cola formulae of manufacturing its products. The company has been able to protect the formulae from competitors for long. Colonel Sander’s recipe for fried chicken is a secret that has been kept under lock and key by the company. Chartreuse liqueur is another example of product protected by trade secrets. Use of Trademarks is another method of protecting intellectual property. Trademarks are indicators, distinctive signs that identify and distinguish certain goods and services produced by certain companies and organisations. Trademarks have made it possible for customers to identify products from selected manufacturers since they act as labels. Trademarks are usually registered and renewed in order to be legally binding. With many kinds of products in the market, genuine products from certain producers are identified by their use. Companies in dealing with sportswear like Adidas and Nike are easily identifiable by trademarks. Sports teams usually market their products to funs using trademark labels in their products. Motor vehicle brands and makes are easily identifiable by customers using trademarks. Trademarks has enabled companies to remain identical to their customers over a long period of time. There use has created customer loyalty over a long period. Forgeries of trademarks are a challenge to their fruitful enjoyment. Intellectual property is of great advantage to companies in the 21st century. Intellectual property protection has enable companies investing in it to be more competitive. Innovation has been fostered in many countries and their ideas and technology protected through copyrights, patents, trade secrets, trademarks among other means. Genuine products in the market place are easily identifiable through such means. Protection of intellectual property discourages companies that like copying others ideas instead of investing in technological innovations. QUESTION 3 Company innovations The world has been witnessing a wide range of technological innovations in various fields. There is emergence of different forms of innovations ranging from business model innovations; business structure innovations and business process innovations. In the current economy majority of technological innovations are associated with companies rather than individuals. Individual innovations have drastically reduced and the current world continuous to witness innovations in products, goods and service delivery being associated with companies. Innovation drives the growth and emergence of opportunities in new markets, (American Management Association, 2006). Innovative companies have gained competitive advantage over its rivals in the globalised economy. This is because innovations make their products attractive while also making production easier, qualitative and increase productivity. Wide ranges of innovations are associated with companies because companies nowadays invest in innovations, research, development, and technology. Innovation is considered as a great resource in companies that helps in improving their competitiveness. Many of them thus invest a lot of resource in technology, research and innovations. Funds in companies are channelled in research to come up with new means of production or new products in the company. Companies compete in attracting and hiring creative employees to their organisations. Creative workers are rewarded thus encouraging more creativity in companies. Some companies practise talent hunting by hiring creative and innovative workers in order to help them in innovations. Investment in innovation creation has seen such companies improve their competitiveness in the global market and this has seen the rise in investment in research and development, training of workers and technology investment companies thus making company innovations to be more than individual innovations. The high innovation emergence in companies’ shows that companies has realised the need for investing in technology and innovation in order to be effective. The globalized nature of the economy has seen wide competition among different companies providing specific goods and services. Innovations have been effectively used to gain an advantage over the rest. Companies that do not invest in it are less competitive in most occasions. Use of intellectual property rights protection means like copyrights, patents, trademarks and trade secrets among other methods makes company’s innovations to be their property thus inhibiting others from using it. Such means makes less innovative companies to be disadvantaged since they cannot copy their competitors’ innovations. Changing of innovation starting points to be originating from companies rather than at individuals thus means each company should invest in it since it will not be in a position of obtaining cheap innovations from individuals. Innovation is currently the driving force of businesses. Each company in the current globalised world must take it seriously and channel funds towards it. The customers changing needs, the need of reducing cost of production, high competition, scarce resources, political and legal factors, emerging scientific discoveries among other factors calls for day-to-day innovations in order to adapt to them. Companies relying on aging technologies are increasingly likely to get waylaid by competitors with new and better technologies and innovations. Organisations and companies must gear up for the era in which they must become effective at managing and spurring innovation. Innovations should go further than just creating new products and services to considering new management principles while challenging old methods in smart and value-added means. References American Management Association. 2006. The Quest for Innovation. A Global Study of Innovation Management 2006-2016. Barrie G. Dale, Ton van der Wiele and Jos van Iwaarden. 2007. Managing Quality 5th ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.. Bouchoux, D. E. 2009. Intellectual property for paralegals: The law of trademarks, copyrights, patents, and trade secrets. Clifton Park, NY, Delmar Cenage Learning. . Koh Tas Yong, Low Sui Pheng. 2008. Organizational culture and TQM implementation in construction firms in Singapore. Construction Management & Economics, 26 (3): 237-248. Poonsook Janpen, Kusuma Palaprom and Pong Horadal. 2005. An Application of Total Quality Management for Thai Communities Knowledge Management Systems. Bangkok: Phranakhon Rajabhat University. U. S. Department of State, Bureau of International Information Programs. 2006. Focus on Intellectual property. Zhang Guoyou, Zhang Yueqiang, and Wang Yiping. 2009. On the Reason for the Innovation of Business Model and the Mechanism of Transformation . Read More