Quality According to Kelemen - Essay Example

Quality According to Kelemen Affiliation Quality According to Kelemen According to Kelemen, the literature of quality has many controversial perspectives; thus lacking a clear conceptualization. Kelemen discusses the different natures of quality using two dimensions that explore further the concept of quality in an organization. The dimensions revolve around defining the quality of a product and its internal and external environment. The main dimensions are those managerial and critical in nature. This paper discusses how the characteristics of quality along with Kelemen’s dimensions were designed to help individuals understand its contextual, fluid and perceived nature. Thus, using examples, it demonstrates my understanding to its essentiality in referring it to various processes. There are four approaches that explain the quality element in a business; product-based approach, the value-based approach, manufacturing based approach and the user-based approach. The four dimensions are termed as managerial because they view the quality as an operational, technical and manageable matter. The product-based approach as a managerial dimension views quality as a measurable and precise variable. It is the difference in the amount of quality to difference of certain desired attribute or ingredient (Martišius & Martišius, 2008). Therefore, as the quality of cocoa in the chocolate cake gets better, the cake quality increases, given that the attribute in question gets considered desirable by every buyer.The definitions in product-based dimensions appeared first in economic literature of supplementing the competitive markets theory. The competitive markets viewed the price competition principle as the driving force in a quality, exchange competition that drew attention to the fact that sellers and buyers did not involve in standardized or homogenous goods exchange. Thus, buyers are interested in the agreement of the right price, and they are also adamant if the good in question is capable of providing expected experiences to them. As Elskytė and Zinkevičiūtė (2008) argue, if services and products were homogeneous, they could have given similar experience. Thus, it is the quality differences that make the services and products capable of giving diverse experience, hence meeting the diverse wants of the buyers. Following few exceptions, most of the theories of economy on quality had their focus on durability because increased durability ensures more of the similarity for a long time; thus, contributing directly to improved quality. The product-based dimension was the first approach to identify the possibility of controlling and measuring the product quality through measuring and controlling the desired ingredient quantities. Even though its focus on capabilities and ingredients can be significant, it is not nor did relevant to contemporary firms and remains confined to the management history drawers. The second dimension is the manufacturing-based perspective. It refers to quality as the degree that specific products conform to a specification or design. For instance, a scholar defined it as the conformance to requirements. Design and process variation get seen as a constant thread to getting conformance to requirements. Though according to other scholars, variation can get totally eliminated for others, only a specific variation type is controllable, others are not. However, if the production process and design are reliable and stable, quality is inherent. To attain consistency in design, firms can employ design engineering Taguchi methods that assume that any deviation from the center maximizes a product’s ultimate cost, including liability, warranty and losing customer’s good will. In the stage of production, statistical process control (SPC) makes the workers tell the difference between the unavoidable errors and the avoidable ones and track the causes of the problems. In addition, source inspection is another technique that can ensure that the errors get identified at the at the beginning before they materialize into defects. This quality approach is engineering driven and gets driven by the statistical method application to controlling variations in process, design, and final products. The control variation idea statistically sprang from an agricultural research that got carried out by Fisher in the early twentieth century (Foster, 2007). The idea aimed at speeding up to crop-growing development methods and Fisher perfected with his method of quality control through spotting the primary cause-effect relationship through data collected. Quality as “conformance to specifications” contains diverse advantages for consumers and managers but few to the employees. Most of the technical advances in quality got achieved in US armament industry. This approach also has the disadvantage of not allowing quantity production leading to the organization to adopting mass production versions where the key to quality is conformance to specifications. The valued-based approach as a managerial perceptive considers quality as being the excellence degree at a variability control or acceptable price at an acceptable cost (Goetsch & Davis, 2006). According to various writers, price and quality are inextricably bound together in the choice of economy. The relationship between costs and quality, however, complex has little agreement in the literature if the relationship is inverse or direct. Such affairs state gets typically attributed to definitional issues and the cost collection inconsistency procedures. The Japanese manufacturers take the view that cost and quality get inversely related because resources put into improving quality get overmatched by the savings made in scrap, rework, and customer complaints. In the western manufacturing paradigm, the relationship between quality and costs get held to be a direct one; thus, better quality presupposes higher costs The relationship between price and quality is similarly fraught with problems. It widely agrees that price impacts individuals quality perceptions though there are no facts to account for the complexity that gets built into this relationship. For instance, for some consumers, smaller prices couched under money value veneer signals reasonable quality at competitive prices. On the contrary, at the market’s upper end, high prices signals exquisite and unique quality reserved only for the few customers that can afford. Thus, in such market, as price rise, the desirability of goods and services maximizes (Goetsch & Davis, 2006). The approach tends to link two distinct concepts: price and quality, resulting in hybrid concept of “affordable excellence”. This dimension lacks well-defined boundaries and also it often very subjective. The user-based approach, the last managerial dimension of quality focusses on the capacity og goods and services to satisfy the wants of a certain consumer. Quality gets typically defined as exceeding and meeting customer expectations (Hansson & Klefsjö, 2003). Even though the impetus for such quality conceptualization comes from the service marketing literature, some of the quality thinkers have listed out the significance of the end-user. Thus, they defined quality as the degree that the product in use meets the customer’s expectations along with how the product successfully serves the user’s purpose. Some quality researchers have identified the significance of customers’ wants and they provide advice on transforming the needs into appropriate services and product specifications (Hansson & Klefsjö, 2003). Marketers have conducted a great deal in identifying the customers’ needs through preference testing so as to sensitize the manufacturers in what is important to consumers. Recently, service marketers have created quality techniques and tools that had the key ingredient in understanding the customer’s expectation, for instance, SERVQUAL. The user-based dimension signals the consumer’s role as the unlimited quality judge. Consumers articulate how dissatisfied or satisfied they are with a service or a product by pinning down the rationale for such judgment tend to be hard. Nevertheless, they are many marketing instruments that permit researchers and managers to include subjective factors into quality definition. Attaining and exceeding the expectations of customers is a very challenging definition of quality of a firm. The other critical dimensions include the transcendental approach, the discursive approach, slogan approach and social constructivist approach. In this dimension, quality gets seen as cultural, social and political process that has diverse meanings. Transcendental approach perspective refers to quality as synonymous to innate excellence. Researchers define it as a powerful illustration of the transcendental approach (Lagrosen & Lagrosen, 2006). Quality is the third entity that is independent of two. According to this dimension, it is regarded as a phenomenon; thus cannot be approached merely by cognition. It is indeed that quality triggers individual’s rational response and also their emotions and feelings like pain, hate happiness and pleasure. Quality as excellence is among the oldest approaches to quality. A firm’s vision articulated around the excellence imagery has a great impact on the employees compared to the conformance to requirements. The former gets loosely defined and give a scope for individual creativity and interpretation while the latter constraints and tends to get perceived as lacking inspiration. The consumers also take pride in owning good products and getting enjoying excellent services (Basu, 2004). Most of the advertising campaigns stress that their products excel, for instance, British Airways, BMW, Mercedes and Chiva Regal. Thus, quantity has to get quantifiable if manufacturers want to be able to control and measure it. Hence, the definition turned from excellence to conformance to requirements to value of money and customer satisfaction. Social constructive approach dimension stresses the social’’ nature and processual of quality. In this case, quality is something that is in the making. Thus, it is a process that various parties contribute to whose effects are difficult to control or predict as a distance. Even though this definition can have less practical relevance from the improving organizational performance point of view, it brings attention to the powerful voices outside and with the firm. Such voices often win out of the other and get referred as the quality reality (Isaksson, 2006). Even though, in the organizational, managerial perspectives the voices are the most powerful ones in marketplaces, it is usually the consumer’s voice or the quality certification body. For instance, instead of looking for quality definition, firms should tend to democratize their practices of quality-related in the extent of marginal voices to be heard. Researchers proposed to move from the benign managerial perspective vision on quality and question the ways that quality gets identified and pursued in firms and uncover the unchallenged assumptions (Isaksson, 2006). The discursive approach creates language central to the quality social construction. It is with and through language that individuals in organizations make meaning, negotiate, construct and enact specific realities. Language represents the socially conditioned process that determines reality, in the sense that itself being determined through existing power relations and social conventions. The discursive dimension to quality emphasizes this interdependence between power, reality, and language. For some researchers, quality is a game of language beyond that there is no reality of material. According to Kelemen, (2006) quality refers to discursive resource whose effects upon a person and collective identities are both linguistic and material, both transient and durable at the same time. Most discursive quality conceptualizations find resonance with Foucault’s writings on knowledge, the self and power and knowledge and have got reflected in current literature on total management of quality. This dimension could get discredited due to its lack of practical usefulness; thus, who could measure discourse? If the quality exists only in language, it can get changed by altering the way individual speak about it. It is itself could be productive: it got documented in the material practices of a certain society. Thus, in turn, by altering the quality language change the way individuals think about it and get to interact with each other. Such change process changes can get experienced as positive and fulfilling though also as oppressive and limiting. It is difficult to imagine that, employees, managers, consumers, and shareholders will ever refer quality as a discourse yet this dimension could stimulate researchers create more imaginative accounts on quantity. The slogan approach refers to the obsession of organization with quality and consequent abuse of the term has resulted in a situation where quality has turned out to be a mere slogan (Kelemen, 2006). A slogan gets defines as a meaningless platitude with that nobody disagrees; thus who can be against quality? Quality provides the unitary illusion meaning as a slogan that gets endorsed by everyone in the firm; thus aiming to construct a normality sense and taken-for-granted common sense in employees. Following its commonsensical message, it becomes difficult to ask questions like; whose quality is good? Why is quality important? What are the quality consequences to the organization’s stakeholders? There is less doubt, for instance, and McDonalds burgers are quality though that does not mean that working as sales manager in the organization is a quality experience (Kimiz, 2005). Moreover, some firms that get seen provide quality services, and products may do so at the harming the environment expense. Therefore, organization should retain being wary of slogans that influence them to view quality as a good project that is inherently that exist in some void outside historical and cultural parameters. As for the slogan of quality hides the political, contentious nature of the consumption and production practices that get necessarily embedded (Lagrosen & Lagrosen, 2005). These practices are significant to understand and challenge so as to reach a quality notion that is more meaningful and democratic Conclusion From the discussion, it gets seen that Kelemen explains quality in management in different dimensions. The main perspective is managerial and critical perspectives. The managerial dimensions explain quality through product-based approach, the value-based approach, manufacturing based approach and the user-based approach dimensions. They view quality as an operational, technical and manageable matter. On the other hand, critical perspectives dimensions include the transcendental approach, the discursive approach, slogan approach and social constructivist approach. In this dimension, quality gets seen as cultural, social and political process that has diverse meanings. Reference List Basu, R. (2004). Implementing Quality. Cornwall: Thomson Learning. 311 p. Elskytė, V.; Zinkevičiūtė, V. (2008). Strategic Decisions Model in ICT Development Context, in the 5th International Scientific Conference “Business and Management2008“, Vilnius, Lithuania, 16–17 May. Selected Papers. Vilnius: Technika, 436–442. Foster, S. T. (2007). Managing Quality: Integrating the Supply Chain. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Prentice Hall. 568 p Goetsch, D., L.; Davis, S., B. (2006). Quality Management: Introduction to Total Quality Management for Production, Processing, and Services. New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall. 814 p. Hansson, J.; Klefsjö, B. (2003). A Core Value Model for Implementing Total Quality Management in Small Organizations. The TQM Magazine 15(2): 71–81. Isaksson, R. (2006). Total Quality Management for Sustainable Development. Process Based System Models. Business Process Management Journal 12(5): 632–645. Kelemen, M. (2006). Managing Quality: Managerial and Critical Perspectives. London: Sage Kelemen, M. (2003). Managing quality. London: SAGE Publications. p. 209. Kimiz, D. (2005). Knowledge Management in Theory and Practice. Elsevier Butterworth Heinemann. 356 p. Lagrosen, Y.; Lagrosen, S. (2005). The Effects of Quality Management – a Survey of Swedish Quality Professionals, International Journal of Operations & Production Management 25 (10): 940–952. Lagrosen, Y.; Lagrosen, S. 2 (006). A Dive into the Depths of Quality Management, European Business Review 18(2): 84–96. Martišius, S.; Martišius, M. (2008). Information Society and Statistics, Inzinerine Ekonomika – Engineering Economics 5(60): 16–23. Read More