Quality Management as a Global Issue - Essay Example

Such issues require an organizational change initiative and have mostly been undertaken by the private sector, or at least research suggests so. However, not much research is available on the extent that public institutions have implemented quality management. The health-care sector in Saudi Arabia is a very vital sector where quality is a critical issue. Quality health care is a basic human right and based on this principle, Saudi hospitals to have joined the movements towards quality management.

They expect that such a strategy would help to overcome organizational deficiencies amidst shrinking budgets (Al-ahmadi & Roland, 2005).Total quality management (TQM) is one such management practice that can help improve health organizational performance. There is no universally accepted definition of TQM and varies across researchers and philosophers and quality experts. Nevertheless, it has been considered as a philosophy for managing organizations (Hill and Wilkinson, 1995; Dean and Bowen, 1994) and most agree on certain core TQM concepts (Waldman, 1993).

These core concepts include:4. Involvement, support and guidance of senior management demonstrating their commitment towards TQM along with the importance of leadership necessary to achieve successful TQM (Johnson, 1990; Juran 1989; Waldman, 1993);Ho and Shih (1999) conducted a review of the works of quality proponents. This study revealed shared principles and certain assumptions of TQM commonly shared by all. The authors surmised that a customer-centric approach is essential to achieve TQM.

This implies that both the products and the services should be customized to meet the customer needs and expectations. To meet the long-term objectives of organizational success, a customer-focused approach is essential. The authors also found that process improvement should be an ongoing process in the organization. This principle is based on the two-fold argument: a) ongoing quality and process improvement lead to customer satisfaction and b) in the long run high-quality products and services have proven to be cost-effective as the resources required are less than for an inferior quality product.