Quality Management, Quality of Management and Quality Culture

Abstract:

Recent global economic meltdown has opened many avenues of discussion and leaving various questions with its

affects. One of them is fate of quality management and its necessity during and after the economic recession. It is

established fact that management commitment is one of the most critical success factors to achieve best possible

results of quality management implementation. So quality of management is not only crucial for effective quality

management but also to foster organizational culture to achieve excellence. Strategic Quality Management pave the

road for effective operational management, therefore role of strategic level management is decisive for developing,

enriching and enhancing quality culture within organization.

This paper will try to highlight some vital issues related to quality of management at strategic level to reflect that it’s

not only the seed i.e. Quality management but also the soil i.e. fertile management soil is important for excellence

culture. So based on literature review and author’s experiences, the paper will draw attention to the factors related

to strategic management level, turbulences they may generate and link it with department tectonic activity (DTA)

establishing how it disturbs organizational culture to achieve excellence. The survey results will reflect that what

strategic level management feels more important among education, development, deployment or monitoring for

addressing the factors and enhancing effectiveness of quality management / excellence model implementation at

their level. Finally relevant recommendations will be shared.

1.0 Introduction and Research Background:

National Bonds Corporation is a governmental entity promoting saving culture and mindset

within Dubai and the UAE. It launched its operations in 2006 and has completed five years now

with the customer base over 600,000 and current employee base is slightly over 200. The author

joined the National Bonds in 2007 when the company completed a year only and was focusing

on business growth, increasing customer base and revenue generation. Since its inception, the

organization has seen tremendous growth continuously through effective and efficient policies

ICQI-Lahore, 2-3 May 2011

and procedures to cope with the economic meltdown. Like many other newly started

organizations, National Bonds was not an exception to undergo various challenges internally and

externally in particular issues related to instilling quality mindset at a strategic management level

in a newly launched company. As the focus of strategic management level people remained on

business growth, the author was facing some critical concerns at a strategic management due to

which quality culture was not able to strengthen. Thinking of such apprehensions brought an idea

to author for writing this paper and to share his experience with respect to issues normally faced

at a strategic management level of organisations. However, the focus of this study does not end

up at National Bonds rather author researched it in wider spectrum through extensive literature

review to explore various factors affecting quality of management and hinder in enriching

quality culture, so findings may enhance understanding of management level personnel. Keeping

in view, this paper will highlight such factors, their potential impact on organizational quality

culture and probable reasons from some quality award winner organizations.

Management professionals understand that quality of management is essential for successful

quality management and quality culture, however studies at strategic level management is not

found as extensive as in the case of operational level management. Traditionally quality

management has been considered as a functional / operational level strategy, where most of the

research and theory building in quality management is related to micro-level of organizations

(Besterfield, 2005). Steiner (1997) reveals that there are two categories of management. That

which is done at the top of organizational structure is Strategic Management and other is

Operational Management. Strategic management provides guidance, directions and boundaries

for operational management which is more of tactical in nature and focus on execution. Nawaz

(2004) through the proceedings of 8th World TQM Congress mentions that if strategic

management has no quality relation, operational management will not be effective because

strategy-quality bond will be lacking (refer to fig.-1). Normally senior management of

organizations is involved in strategies setting, so their role at strategic management level is

crucial either establishing or implementing quality management and excellence model. Keeping

in view the micro-level focus of quality management, Ahmed and Machold (2004) highlighted

that “there is not much related work on macro-level analysis of organizations and accordingly

there is a need to look at quality management from the strategic view point”.