Total Quality Management for Improving Workplace Performance - Annotated Bibliography Example

Section/# Annotated Bibliography Ahire, S. L. (1997). Management Science-Total Quality Management Interfaces: An Integrative Framework. Interfaces, 27(6), 91-105. As a means of providing a definition of Total Quality Management (TQM) it is necessary to understand how the practice came to meet unique needs within the realm of business. For this purpose, the article by Sanjay Ahire’s entitled, “Management Science – Total Quality Management Interfaces: An Integrative Framework” has been included within this annotated bibliography. Within the article, Ahire notes that Total Quality Management is ultimately a process whereby the “philosophy of management for continuously improving the quality of products and processes” is instituted (Ahire 1997). In this way, the reader is made aware of the fact that the institution of TQM is not something that is merely done once; rather it has a definite cultural aspect to the way in which the firm operates. Alfalla-Luque, R., Marín-García, J. A., & Medina-López, C. (2012). Is worker commitment necessary for achieving competitive advantage and customer satisfaction when companies use HRM and TQM practices?. Universia Business Review, (36), 64-88. Total quality management can apparently be defined as an organizational wide effort that seek to instill employment permit changes with regards the climate the organization, the means through which it integrates with itself, the means through which it integrates with the consumer, and the means through which the overall quality of the products or services that delivers is determined. Naturally, as the name implies, rather than looking at specific aspect of the organization and seeking to make it more streamlined, total quality management is more concentric upon seeking to manage the organization as a whole and develop all of the processes and levels of integration that exist within it in such a manner that a level of synergy can be realized between all of these factors (Alfalla-Luque et al., 2012). Obviously, as can quickly be noted, such an approach is difficult to achieve on any macro scale and ultimately breaks down into a situation in which micro processes will dictate whether or not total quality management, or some lesser achievement, will ultimately be realized. Whereas many different approaches to management had existed over the past several decades, total quality management, although still employed within a litany of different fields, has not experienced the same widespread level of success that it did during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Instead, the article indicates that approaches such as ISO 9000 and Six Sigma have permeated the management field and slightly turned the focus away from total quality management; at least as compared to what it was two decades ago. Experts within the United States, after viewing Japan’s structure and industrialization, as well as improvement upon its products, began to warn those within the United States that in less a fundamental reintegration with quality management was performed, the Japanese, and perhaps many others throughout the world, would be able to gain a competitive advantage against the United States. Individuals such as W. Edward Deming raising the alarm among American producers and industrialists with regards to the fact that American goods would surely come to be represented as second rate unless core changes were made with respect to the manner through which quality control was understood and engaged. Pointing to the fact that managers and business leaders alike had categorically misunderstood or outright ignored this aspect of business improvement, tuning, as well as others, were able to reengage those within industry and production with the need to radically alter the manner through which quality control was directed and evolved. Unfortunately, rather than heeding the advice of individuals such as bending, industrialists and manufacturers within the United States continued to believe that Japan’s total competitive advantage was predicated upon price alone. As such, the United States response to this was to attempt to cut prices as a means of matching Japan’s level of success. As can clearly be noted, the strategy was an abysmal failure as quality control diminished even further with regards to this failed attempts to cut costs. Ultimately, the situation became so bad that manufacturers within the United States began to realize that further and further market share was slipping away outside the country as a result of their abysmal reputation with regards to quality performance. Further, legislation within Washington was directed at attempting to force manufacturing into a level of revision so that these issues could no longer playing the system as a whole. Berry, L. L., & Parasuraman, A. (1992). Prescriptions for a service quality revolution in America. Organizational Dynamics, 20(4), 5-15. Many scholars and researchers have promoted total quality management as a means of fundamentally restructuring the way in which a given firm or organization seeks to engage with stakeholders. Nevertheless, even though this concept is not particularly new, the article in question delves into the historical approach that total quality management has taken within an industry that is hardly recognizable from the one that existed only 20 years ago. In providing a historical context and background to the issue total quality management, the piece is of essential importance and framing the issue and eliciting further levels of understanding concerning where the historical attributes of total quality management were drawn from what others theories and managerial strategies coalesced as a means of prompting this particular approach into a degree of renewed interest within the business world over the past several decades. The article also traces some of the history behind how developments within qualitymanagement came to positively affect the United States economy over the years. Yet, American infrastructure and production was salvaged as a new approach and integration came to be appreciated with respect to quality control. Even a cursory review of the auto industry reveals the fact that the United States definitively trailed behind other nations, and some argue still does, with respect to the quality of its automobiles in the 1980s. However, beginning in the early 1990s, quality management was something that the big three automakers decided was of such great importance that they could not afford to lose out on this competition any further. As such, the tangential increase in the quality of American products that can be witnessed from the mid-1990s up until the present time help to allow the United States to reengage quality management and promote its goods worldwide. Bernardo, M. (2014). Integration of management systems as an innovation: a proposal for a new model. Journal Of Cleaner Production, 82132-142. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.06.089 The article in question focuses on management systems and the degree and extent to which these management systems are in fact an antecedent to whether or not effective total quality management occurs. Within such an understanding, the author indicates that far too many firms to apply concepts of its benefits without first reviewing your management systems understanding the mind which total quality management will impact upon the systems and what aspects of these systems should be altered as a means of promoting it. Likewise, the analysis also focuses on best practices that have been exhibited by major fortune 500 companies that have engaged with total quality management and the degree and extent to which these best practices universalized and provided to stakeholders elsewhere within the business world. Through such a level examination, the reader, understand total quality management is much more involved than simply effecting a change in leadership direction and encouraging stakeholders that this direction will uniformly defined for immediate future. Instead, the author indicates that it is a systemic direction and issues that must be engaged in a variety of different standpoints in order for lasting change ultimately occur. Ciurea, A., & Nedelcu, A. (2014). Analysis of the instruments and techniques used for total quality management. Proceedings of The Scientific Conference AFASES, 2383-387. The article examines the implications of analysis of the instruments and techniques for total quality management (TQM) in the educational system. It states that the implementation of quality models inspired by TQM will be very difficult and will generate distrust and uncertainty. It identifies the important characteristics of quality culture such as diversity extreme and contradictory nature of the concept of quality. Likewise, the article, indicates that many business involved in global competition around the world have experienced hardship in that no concrete quality management strategy has been implemented. Further, as the United States was able to develop its own industrial base and provide a great level of integration with the workforce during the war years, and increased industrial output that was able to produce and provide goods for a global market came to be represented. With few competitors and the ability to dominate global trade in the period of the 1950s and 1960s, the United States rapidly gained influence and economic power. However, this level of dominance soon was challenged with regards to many developing nations around the world as they began to industrialize and had the potential capacity to produce goods at a lower price than the United States. The lower-priced in and of itself was not a key concern. However, the ability of nations such as China to produce items of increased quality caused much alarm within the United States. Eraghi, G. F., & Atharinejad, S. Y. (2012). A new approach based on total quality management (TQM) for improving quality service. International Journal Of Natural & Engineering Sciences, 6(2), 33-38. Although many of the authors that were analyzed within this annotated bibliography included information regarding how the process of total quality management can be applied, this particular group of authors denoted that total quality management has a direct and indirect impact upon the overall quality of service that a given organization is able to provide to its stakeholders. As such, and interpretation of this dynamic reveals the fact that total quality management is not only beneficial in a necessary level of product or quality overview and determination, it is also an essential element in providing an improvement in the quality of service that might otherwise be exhibited. The authors ultimately argued that the quality of service is indirectly and directly by the increased focus on quality firm or upper management is able to elicit. This inherently encourages a level of improve service quality as these two are interconnected related at many different levels. The study was performed with convincing him that utilizes fools of the means of measuring service improvement as a function of the existence or nonexistence of total quality management within a firm. By utilizing these techniques, the reader is presented with a robust argument in favor of applying total quality management, even if at a high as it is able to directly impact upon the overall outline of the firm in uniquely positive way. Gupta, V., Garg, D., & Kumar, R. (2014). Depiction of Total Quality Management during a Span of 2003-2013. Journal Of Engineering & Technology, 4(2), 81-86. doi:10.4103/0976-8580.141170 Whereas the majority of articles focus on total quality management has been relevant to the current era, this particular article focuses its unit of analysis on the path; attempting to understand the means by which total quality management is impacting the market between the years 2003 until 2013. What the authors found was that total quality management has been affected throughout the world; partially as a function of globalization. Firms that provide of goods and services have adopted total quality management as a means of engaging with the consumer and reducing inefficiencies that were exhibited previously within their supply chains and management structures. However, the authors also indicated that the engagement of total quality management the years in question has not only been positive. In many cases, total quality management and its applications have been faulty and flawed; effecting a situation in which a given firm has spent an order of magnitude more money and forms of transitional management training as compared to the overall amount of money that was saved initially. However, although these transitional stages have been difficult, the article points to the fact that the overall net benefit total quality management and the years in question and firms under analysis has been positive. James, D., Ames, D., Lopez, B., Still, R., Simpson, W., & Twomey, P. (2014). External quality assessment: best practice. Journal Of Clinical Pathology, 67(8), 651-655. doi:10.1136/jclinpath-2013-201621 This particular article focuses upon the shortcomings in self-assessment that many companies make in terms of their own level of total quality management. Essentially, the authors promote the understanding that in order for total quality management to be assessed, outside analysts and observers have to be brought in as third-party contractors. The reason behind this is concentric upon the understanding that the engagement of third-party analysts that are not a part of the given organization will provide a level of nonbiased analysis that can effectively understand whether or not quality management is being performed the level that is being claimed. In many cases, the authors indicated that total quality management was claimed to have been a fundamental part of what a given company and/or organization was attempting to establish; however, upon further review by analysts from outside, it was quickly determined that nothing like total quality management had been affected and that the organizational structure was merely paying a level of obligatory lipservice to this particular goal and metric. As a means of quality assessment, the authors further indicate that outside contractors will be best suited to analyzing total quality management without a paradigm of bias that would be exhibited within a company that was seeking to analyze itself and determine whether or not best practices were indeed exhibited. LiJuan, C., & Hanbin, L. (2014). A BIM-based construction quality management model and its applications. Automation In Construction, 4664-73. doi:10.1016/j.autcon.2014.05.009 As the world shifts more towards technological applications for almost each and every aspect of business, technological applications have also been promoted as a potential means of developing total quality management and improving upon its overall impacts and results. Within this line of reasoning, the authors of this particular piece promote the understanding that technologically-based alternatives to total quality management can be utilized and can have a positive impact on the degree and extent to which its goals are ultimately realized within a given organization. Taking the case of the construction industry as an example, the authors delve into an analysis of total quality management as it relates to the way in which a given computer program is capable of analyzing and computing different inputs that total quality management must necessarily involved. Whereas the individual manager might be focused upon a certain aspect of total quality management, the given program in question is one that provides an overview of different metrics and encourages leaders within management to continually address these and provide necessary inputs so that the broader goals of total quality management can in fact be affected. The article is further of interest due to the fact that he relates the growing scope of technology as it relates to more nebulous concepts such as total quality management as a means of categorizing and quantifying their overall outputs and inputs. Milosan, I. (2014). Studies about the total quality management concept.  Bulletin Of Engineering, 7(3), 43-46. The author of the piece in question delves deeply into what total quality management is actually defined as. Whereas many other of the articles under analysis within this particular annotated bibliography have focused a degree of discussion on various aspects of total quality management, this particular article seeks to define and based in very broad terms. This is a useful and beneficial inclusion into the discussion as a definition and clear understanding of total quality management and how it impacts on various sectors of the economy has thus far been lacking within much of the scholarly research and output on this particular topic. PAKOCS, R. (2014). Qaulity Management Applied Through QFD Method. Proceedings Of The Scientific Conference AFASES, 1319-324. The author of the article in question points the fact of the total quality management goes beyond merely increasing profitability and has a direct impact upon consumer satisfaction. Naturally, the two are interrelated; however, for purposes of this brief research paper, the author points the fact that consumer satisfaction is believed to be interrelated to total quality management and that the consumer is directly able to feel tangential impacts of how total quality management effects the product or service that they are receiving. Naturally, seeking to measure this perceived change, without tangible determinants, is an extraordinarily difficult task to accomplish. Nevertheless, the author indicates that certain methodologies that are being utilized within various sectors of the economy which attempt to provide this are inherently flawed and create a situation in which the understanding of total quality management within the consumer base is accurate or misrepresented. As a means of justifying this, the author indicates the total quality management should not be analyzed from marketing standpoint until the point in time in which determinant metrics can in fact be engaged. Otherwise, the author argues, the overall inference that can be drawn is limited at best. Pavolová, H., & Tobisová, A. (2013). The Model of Supplier Quality Management in a Transport Company. Nase More, 60(5/6), 123-126. Whereas total quality management definitively impacts upon a given organization or department within an organization, the authors of this particular article discusses the impact that the supply chain have also quality management and the degree and extent to which total quality management within a given firm extend to its ultimate supply chain. This is of course a continuous process at best; however, the authors indicate that total quality management, we performed correctly, can create a culture by which transfusion and osmosis of total quality management concept can be inherently adopted and championed by unrelated firms that are involved within the supply chain of the firm which has adopted total quality management and championed it as a way of doing effective business. In much the same way that best practices can in fact become “infectious” the authors of the article indicate that the firm that wants to make the most drastic impact upon its supply chain in terms of total quality management adaptation, should seek to practice it as perfectly as possible; in the hopes that others will follow suit and develop based upon a similar rubric of implementing total quality management within their structure and design for management. Although the authors indicate that this is not a guaranteed process for success, they provide several different examples and clarifications for the way in which prior firms have utilized the same approach to a great level of success. Siew Yong, L., Kee Luen, W., & Thean Chye, L. (2014). A Proposed Framework for TQM, Market Orientation and Performance Management. International Journal Of Academic Research, 6(3), 106-111. doi:10.7813/2075-4124.2014/6-3/B.16 The authors of this particular article promote the argument that even though total quality management was initially viewed as a means of providing an increased level of customer satisfaction and increased levels of efficiency within firms that were ultimately focused upon providing goods or industrial supplies to the market, this paradigm has subsequently shifted. As the years have progressed and the overall benefit of total quality management has come to be recognized in various sectors throughout the economy, the degree and extent to which the service market is impacted upon by this theoretical approach has been drastic and measurable. Yet, beyond merely understanding this in terms of customer satisfaction and the means by which priorities can be established within the firm, the authors indicate that total quality management is also a means for effective measure of evolution and more realistic alignment with ongoing business needs. As the business space is continuing to develop a rapid pace, stakeholders are finding it necessary to alter managerial approaches at such a rate that many human resource analysts indicate could potentially be damaging to the culture or orientation a particular firm seeks to employ. However, the authors argued that the instigation and utilization of total quality management within such service industries is a means of ameliorating this threat and ultimately providing for a level of expectation and change that is conducive to evolutionary development within such an organization. Read More