Leadership Concepts Vital to Successful Quality Management - Literature review Example

Running Header: Leadership concepts that are vital to successful quality management Student’s Name: Instructor’s Name: Course Name & Code: Date of Submission: Introduction The increased competition has raised interest in focusing on maximising firm activities in order to achieve quality goals and to build a continuous improvement. Appleton (1993) describes that quality management includes an integrated approach used by various firms in order to improve firm’s capabilities and to attain a competitive advantage. Quality management also involves encouraging a continuous flow of goods and services as well as improvement in the quality of goods produced by a particular firm. However ensuring that goods produced are of high quality does not solve all the managerial problems and therefore other aspects should be initiated such as leadership management. This study discusses the leadership concepts used by managers in order to ensure success in quality management implementation. Quality management implementation Quality management implementation deals with the manner in which people manage for future benefits. Ferguson and Robert (2003) suggests that application of quality management has a wider view than just ensuring that products offered or services meet the customers’ needs. It instead deals with managing all the human resources and ensuring that all the business processes produce satisfaction to the customers both internally and externally. Implementation of quality management while linked to effective leadership management ensures that all activities are conducted at the right way, the right time and the right people are involved. The foundation of quality management is to ensure that customer-supplier interfaces are satisfied and to achieve this various processes are involved. These include employee commitment to producing quality products, implementation of effective communication systems is also necessary. This is vital since it ensures flow of quality information across all the levels of management. The other process involved in quality management implementation is the recognition of the required culture to be used by the organization in order to achieve total quality. The above processes should also be linked to the major management functions of an organization which included people, processes involved and systems necessary to ensure the implementation of quality products. According to Stanly (2002) quality is defined as the process of amusing customers by producing goods that fully meet their expectations as well as their purpose for purchasing that particular product. Some of the customers’ expectations include performance of the product, its appearance, availability, and reliability. Customers may also be interested to purchase a product that is easy to maintain, is cost effective and it should be sold at an affordable price. It is therefore necessary for every organization to be aware of the different needs that customers value before purchasing a product. After identifying these needs, the firm must be in a position of evaluating every need to ensure that it is capable of meeting them accordingly (Garvin, 1997). Quality management begins with analysing the market. This is where by a firm conducts a market research in order to establish the various needs and expectations of customers. The requirements of product needed to achieve quality are also examined in this market research. In order for an organization to carryout an effective market analysis, implementation of quality management should be spread across the organization to all departments, every individual and all the functions carried out in the firm should be integrated. The organization must also ensure that a common language of improvement is initiated in the business. This involves ensuring cooperation of all human resources at every stage of production as this ensures quality improvement. In every organization, there exist a customer, a supplier and the link between the two. These form a quality chain which can be broken once one of the parties fails to meet the requirement of the organizations policies. Some of these failures occur between misunderstanding between the external customers and organizational linkages. It is therefore necessary to ensure that every part of the system meets all the vital requirements since failure of one parts leads to multiple problems. To achieve this, the organization should train every individual involved in quality improvement (Stanly, 2002). These individuals should be in a position of knowing the rights customers, their needs and expectations and how these can be achieved. The employees should also examine how they are able to use their capabilities in order to meet the needs of customers. One this is known, employees should then focus on how to maintain quality production to achieve future expectations of the organization. This will be achieved by monitoring various changes in the market and understanding the customers’ preferences. The organization on the other hand should be in a position of identifying the potential and internal suppliers. Appleton (1993) suggests that managers should also communicate these needs and expectations to the suppliers and ensure that suppliers are capable of meeting these needs. The managers should continually inform suppliers incase there are changes in needs according to the changes in the market environment. The needs of suppliers should also be met to ensure that they are capable of achieving the organizational goals. This forms an open partnership relationship where both the organization and the supplier benefit. To ensure quality management implementation, every individual in a firm must be able to identify a various bad practices that would not lead to an effective management. Some of these practices include failure of leaders to show a clear direction to be followed. The other bad practice involved is where the organisation tends to ignore the competitive position of the business thus failing to produce goods that meet this position. Problems occur in an organisation once every department decided to follow its own policies or where people are controlled by systems. Quality management should also not be confused with grade since they are two different aspects. Individuals in an organisation should not have an attitude where they decide that errors are inevitable as this will lead to production of more defective products. Blaming others should also not be encouraged in an organisation that aims at implementing quality management system. Leadership concepts Quality management implementation is a method used by firms aiming at achieving competitiveness, effectiveness and flexibility and also an organisation that aims at meeting all the needs of their customers. To achieve this, an organisation ahs to integrate all its processes such as planning, organizing and controlling. In all these activities, wasted effort should be eliminated to ensure success. Leaders on the other hand should ensure that they adapt to a strategic overview of quality in a way that they will be capable of initiating these skills to the rest of the members. Leaders have to focus on detecting organizational issues that would slow down the implementation process (Scholtes and Hacquebord, 1998). To achieve this, every individual should be involved for example in the decision making process as this makes it easier to identify the problems faced by employees or suppliers. Senior management should show their commitment to ensuring quality improvement. Middle managers should also demonstrate the seriousness involved in the process of developing quality products. Grant, et al. (2004) describes that this seriousness is demonstrated by ensuring that all the principles, strategies and benefits achieved by the implementation are all communicated to every individual in the organisation. Every member of the firm should be ensuring that their responsibilities are well set in order to avoid delays in some departments. This is necessary as is ensures that the right attitudes are spread across all departments. A sound quality policy is also fundamental since people need to be controlled using set policies. Organizations strategies and tools necessary to implement quality management support this policy. Leaders should therefore be responsible for preparing, analyzing and monitoring the introduced policy in order to ensure its success. Leaders should also be involved in regular enhancement of the policy to ensure that every individual understands it and can effectively adapt to the policy. Norman (1990) shows that effective leadership concepts are developed by understanding the mission statement and the strategies introduced by the firm to achieve this mission. The mission statement is then translated into successful action plans which are translated to every level of management. Once these actions are combined to quality management, they result to a better position in the competitive market since the customers are satisfied and at the same time better results are achieved. To ensure effective leadership is maintained in an organisation, there are some requirements needed. One is that leaders should be capable of developing and publishing organizations values, beliefs and set objectives as included in the mission statement. This is necessary as it enables all the employees to check constantly the corporate values and to correct in case of default. Leaders should also be personally involved in the organisations objectives. This is where the leaders act as role models to the rest of the members in order to ensure adapting of a culture of quality maintenance. The other requirement needed by leaders is to develop clear and effective strategies necessary to support effective plans. Leaders should be committed to initiating effective strategies to the members they lead in order to achieve the organisation’s mission and vision. These strategies should be evaluated in such a way that they are easily applicable to various activities carried out in the business. The fourth requirement of leaders is that they should impose constant reviewing of the management systems to ensure that all activities run smoothly and are moving in the right direction. Members in an organisation should not be controlled by system around the business environment but leaders should be capable of taking part in management. According to Armstrong (2005) leaders should also be able to communicate, motivate and support all the human resources as this encourages effective employee involvement. Since leaders link the top management level or the organization and the employees who are at the lower level. They should be capable of supplying enough information necessary to improve quality management implementation. Leaders should act as role models to the employees by directing them to the right direction. Implementation of quality management can be discouraging and to avoid failures it is necessary to set up various leadership skills that filter out various beliefs about quality management. Every leader should consider the following aspects in order to achieve effective management. One is that leaders should understand that every organization’s aim is to achieve a long-term commitment to produce quality goods. Ashmore (2002) describes that this commitment is continuous since no organisation would want to produce quality goods today then spoil the goods in the future. Once the leaders understand this aspect they will be in a position to ensure that every member understands the concept too. Leaders should also consider adopting a philosophy of producing zero defective products. The culture should be spread across the business as this will enable members to be careful at all stages of production. Adoption of this philosophy will enable the organization save of various operating costs which can be used in improving quality. Leaders should also consider training their members for them to understand the relationship between customers and suppliers. These members will also understand the customers’ needs and expectations from the organization. The other point that leaders have to consider is that customers do not purchase according to the prices set for goods and services but they purchase according to the total cost saved by purchasing the product. Leaders should also be capable of recognizing whether the systems used in management are effective. This will be necessary at it saves on time used to produce one product and if it is effective then more products will be produced thus increase in output. Leaders should adopt a modern method of supervising their members and training modern skills especially in a changing market where customers’ preferences change with the changing trends (Kaufman and Atsusi, 2002). Conclusion This method of leadership aspects is necessary as it eliminates fear of change from one culture to another and members develop in skills and creative thinking. Barriers between separate departments in one business environment should be avoided as this is a major cause of failure. Leaders should be capable of improving teamwork and creating a good relationship among all members. This will be achieved by improving communication through introducing out of work interruption where individuals get to know each other. References Appleton, E. L. (1993). Bonding with customers through better service. Datamation, 5(39), pp. 69-70. Armstrong, J. S. (2005). The value of formal planning for strategic decisions. Strategic Management Review, 5(9), pp. 197-199. Ashmore, G. (2002) Better information means better quality, Journal of Business Strategy. 5(13), pp. 57-60. Philadelphia: Lippincott. Ferguson, M., & Robert, A. (2003). Service quality: A critical success factor for IS organisations, Information strategy. The Executive’s Journal. 9(1), (pp. 24-27). Canada: Penguin Books. Garvin, A. (1997). Competing on the eight dimensions of quality. Harvard Business Review. 65(8), pp. 101-108. England: Clarendon Press. Grant, R. M., Rami, S., & Krishnan, R. (2004). TQM"s challenge to management theory and practice. Sloan Management Review, 6(8), (pp. 25-34). MA: Cambridge University Press. Kaufman, R., & Atsusi, H. (2002). Ten steps to TQM plus. Educational Leadership Journal. 50(3), 33-35. Norman, A. R. (1990). TQM is the key to being a winner. Martin Marietta Today, 5(1), 2-4. Scholtes, R., & Hacquebord, H. (1998). Beginning the quality transformation. Quality Process, (pp. 28-33). Philadelphia: University of Pennslvania Press. Stanly, C. M. (2002). Total quality for a sustainable competitive advantage. Quality Review, 3(6), 4-7. Read More