Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Abstracts
Quality management implementation needs a supportive environment to enable a well-
ordered flow of change processes that leads to a framework involving three dimensions
of change, i.e. content, process and context. As the content of quality management
expands, quality management implementation introduces new ways of thinking that
have to be congruent with related contexts. Such a relationship exists because quality
management implementation represents construction of a set of values and behavior as
the fundamental components of an organization.
Keywords:
Quality Management Implementation, Content, Context, Process
1. Introduction
In dealing with problems, many efforts are unsuccessful because organizations are
restricted and controlled by their contexts and also by their internal characteristics.
Certain contexts and characteristics often limit an organization’s ability to improve its
internal weaknesses. Organizations need concrete decisions and actions for their current
and anticipated problems. The objective is aimed not only at obtaining internal
efficiency, productivity and people satisfaction, but also at improving external
relationships. To fulfill this objective, the necessary efforts involve improving and
accumulating essential know-how, and for certain organizations the improvements are
fundamental. For example, in improving external relations, organizations may fail to
initiate a link because they do not comply with basic or standard requirements, such as
management and administration systems. This is often the case with organizations in
developing countries such as Indonesia because they tend to pay more attention only to
the improvement of technical skills for internal efficiency (Wilson et al., 1995).
3. Research Methodology
Considering the questions of why, how and what of implementation, this research
considers the three essential dimensions of change of Pettigrew and Whipp (1991) as
follows:
• Content of quality management. The elements that are developed, which include
leadership, strategy and policy, people, resources, and process management. The
content also considers actions (how and why) under an orientation to customer
satisfaction, people development, business result, and others.
• Context of organisation. How and why the internal and external backgrounds of
organisation influence or shape directly or indirectly the process of implementation
to develop quality management content. As a consequence, the developed quality
management routines institute norms, values and behaviour as representations of
context.
• Process of implementation. How transformation is carried out through processes
(initiation, adoption, and adaptation) towards an expectation (e.g. total quality
management). The main substance in this transformation includes generating
commitment, participation and involvement.
Quality management, as technology, is the product and medium of people and structures
that interact with each other. In implementing a technology in an organization, Barley
(1990) mentions two approaches for lining up technology and structure, i.e. (i)
extending macro-social forces, and (ii) micro-social bottom-up suggestions. The
proponents of the first approach argue that a strong interest can establish an ideology,
through which the developed arrangements guide the design, selection and
implementation of an introduced technology. In this way, the implemented technologies
are those that are consistent with the established ideology. This approach limits efforts
for significant change. The second approach considers the alignment of technology and
structure through micro-social processes as a new technology is introduced. Later,
structural changes go upwards. The perspective of the second approach is a resurgence
of two streams of theory, i.e. the sociology of automation and socio-technical systems
theories (Barley, 1990). Both theories argue that technology adjusts the task, the job and
the required skills, which initiates change and generates demands for structural
organizational change.
Both approaches are needed and complementary, at least for two reasons (Scott,
1990). Firstly, the contextual elements of an organization influence the design of the
organization and the technology, and secondly any implemented technology has
intended and unintended consequences that affect the activities of an organization.
Accordingly, “it is difficult to see how any social structure can be produced or
reproduced except through ongoing action and interaction” (Barley, 1990). Known as
sequential approach of structuring, this approach is a beneficial strategy for
investigating empirical social dynamics occasioned by new technology (Barley 1986,
and Pettigrew 1997).
Integrating the two approaches, in lining up technology and structure in research into
quality management implementation, is attractive since the interplay between macro and
micro social dynamics is readily observable. In many cases, the quality management
implementation process starts by considering quality management as a newly introduced
method or tools for a specific accomplishment in a given contextual condition. This
newly introduced method is seen as a new plan for the organization that enables
implementation to proceed. After a period (or process) of implementation, the
organization and people learn what is progressing properly and what is not. The learning
impacts the construction of the related context. This new context may create new
contingencies, and then restructure the subsequent process and content of quality
management implementation. From this consideration, the implementation process, as a
repeated construction, puts the context not as a mediating variable, but as both object
and subject through interactions with content and process. This argument leads to inter-
related influences in structuring between content, context and process as shown in
Figure 1 (Irianto et al., 2002).
Context
(Organizational & cultural)
Process Content
(Implementation) (Quality management)
Quality management literatures indicate the opinion that participation of all people
contribute to the effectiveness of the implementation process. Participation by the
people in an organization has an effect on the construction of organizational culture and
the structure as an influential context for quality management implementation. The
variations in participation can be complementary, reinforcing or cancel each other out in
terms of the impacts on the desired effectiveness. A summary of the influences and the
developed context of organizational culture and structure, at the studied companies, is
given in Table 1.
The characteristics of the organizational cultures in the three studied companies were
almost similar. COMPANY #3 was more open-oriented and normatively-oriented than
COMPANY #1 and COMPANY #2. Small differences were also found in the
dimensions of result (or process), employee (or job), parochial (or professional), and
loose (or tight). The differences were small on most dimensions, except for the
dimensions of process-oriented and parochial. For the open-close dimension, the
responses varied; COMPANY #1 was slightly close-oriented, COMPANY #2 was
slightly open-oriented, and COMPANY #3 was clearly open-oriented. With these
findings, the organizational culture dimension at the studied companies were concluded
as being result-oriented, job oriented, parochial, tight controlled and normative.
From the interviews, it is concluded that top management considered that skilled
employees with low salaries were still in line with the workforce availability that, in
general, was characterized as having technical skills and low educational levels. This
situation had two implications at the organizational level. Firstly, tight customer
specifications were operationalised by a strict control of technical specifications, which
led to tight control. This practice built an attitude of “meeting customer specifications”
that focused on technical specifications. It implied that the orientation was on the job
rather than on the employee. Employees were directed towards understanding the
specifications technically, monitoring their outcome, self-evaluating in terms of the
specifications, and following standard procedures. Accordingly, employees assumed
that (i) the developed standard operating procedures were correct, which led to a result-
oriented culture, and (ii) judged any non-conformances as employees’ mistakes, which
led to a normative culture. Secondly, the adopted vision, such as customer satisfaction
or a “find the defect” philosophy, contributed to creating a problem-solving orientation.
With a lack of the necessary knowledge, and without sufficient guidance, however,
employees understandably turned to a trial and error approach. The lack of knowledge
also limited the problem-solving to internal issues, which influenced the formation of a
parochial-oriented culture.
The developed context at the studied companies was decentralized and highly
formalized. In this situation, decentralization is a condition in which top management
delegates authority for decision-making to managers lower down in the hierarchy.
Johnson and Scholes (1999) use the term “devolution” for such decentralization, and see
the transition as a continuum rather than a black-and-white choice. In general, wide
gaps in income between the lower and upper levels commonly results in a high
hierarchy of organizational structure. In Indonesia, one's position, as social status, and
income (or money), as a measure of wealth, commonly determine the degree of power
of an individual (e.g. Robison, 1996). Considering income as a measure of power, this
high hierarchical system has a tendency towards creating a high power distance within
an organization. In contrast, in terms of the categorization of tasks, the functional
structures of the organizations were flat. As a consequence, decentralization in
functional terms could be realized easily.
Instead of creating flexibility, a high hierarchy plus a high power distance led to a high
degree of formalization for three reasons. Firstly, based on their good knowledge,
experience and formal position in the structure, the top management centralized the
decision-making. Secondly, the superficial understanding of customer satisfaction had
led to inspection-oriented quality management, and thus created a result-oriented culture.
Considering the requirement for results as the final target, employees adopted a trial and
error approach to improvements due to their limited skills. In anticipation and to avoid
further deviations from the plans, the management responded by giving directions (and
occasionally coercing) the workers to follow the standard operating procedures that
structured formalization in the organization. Thirdly, besides quality, the studied
companies paid attention to delivery deadlines as an important requirement. With this
new requirement, employees were no longer working at their usual speed. They
experienced pressure to meet the due dates for each job order. With high volume
production, employees just did their job and became mechanistic, exhausted, and
passive, and thus heavily relied on standard-operating procedures.
5. Conclusion
This empirical study expresses the link between the strategy for improving
organisational capability and the quality management implementation. The link
expresses a high concern for improving internal aspects of an organisation through
quality management implementation, which is important for improving inter-
organisational cooperation. Improving inter-organisational cooperation includes
improving operational and managerial capabilities and developing trust. From this
study, key important issues were obtained. It can be concluded that the transformation
of the organisations into decentralised and formalised structures at the studied
companies was influenced by the national culture, organisational culture and individual
characteristics. The decentralisation of tasks was not always followed by the
decentralisation of authorisation for decision-making. This condition led to a high
degree of formalisation rather than the flexibility which is favourable for the
implementation of quality management.
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