Abstract
Total quality management, which is the practice of striving
fore customer satisfaction by ensuring quality from all
departments in an organization deals mainly with top
management commitments and employees involvement. Top
management trying to make the employees part of the
processes and getting them involved in the quality programme
to achieve customer satisfaction. This work tries to find out if
total quality management improves organizations performance
and also to know how organization perceives total quality
management as a management strategy. In finding out the
answers to the above, the researcher used simple percentages
and chi square in analyzing the questionnaires given, it was
found out that through the implementation of total quality
management in an organization its performance will be highly
improved in that TQM involves the involvement of all the
members of an organization working towards a definite aim
and it will in no doubt improve the organizations p
1.1 BACKGROUND OF STUDY
Experience has shown that consumers of goods and
services are becoming more sensitive to product quality more
than before and as a result, producers cannot afford to take
for granted the issue of quality which itself is a function of
good performance. Corporations produced to sell and make
maximum profit irrespective of consumers taste and style. For
instance, bank consumer expects efficient, quick and
courteous service from his banker and readers of newspaper
anticipates clarity of production, grammatical soundness and
dept of news coverage from the editor. Likewise consumer of
manufacturing products expects high reliability and
effectiveness of the products manufactured from that industry.
It is therefore not enough to meet specification, but also
meet all the quality the customer expects from the product. In
this context therefore, quality means “Total or Complete
quality”. That is a customer is able to get the right quality and
quantity of goods and services at the right time. All these
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should be achieved at first attempt and not when patronage is
repeated on several occasions.
Total Quality Management according to Nwachukwu C.C.
(2006) are set of principles and practices whose core idea
include understanding customer needs, doing things right the
first time and striving for continuous improvement. It is a
management approach which is aimed at incorporating
awareness of quality in all organizational processes.
Many organization are striving for quality products and
services that will meet or exceed customers expectations and
as a result of this, they are searching for approaches to
manage people and production system that will assure that
transformation of inputs into quality output.
In comparing the performance of public and private
enterprise, there exists a general understanding that public
enterprise in both developed and developing countries have
performed below expectation it has been argued that excessive
political interference and bureaucratic failure are responsible
mainly for the inefficiency associated with public sector. To
salvage this, the privatizations and commercialization
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exercises come into being. Hence poor performance resulting
in the inability to perform, failure to meet customer
expectation and inability to meet target result, shareholders
demand and there social responsibilities. They can be readily
discovered using various operational techniques especially as
it relates to the various inputs into the production.
So in achieving greater performance, the concept of Total
Quality Management is the tool since Total Quality
Management involves people and system working
harmoniously for the benefit of the customers, the
achievement of corporate goals and enhancement of workers
quality of life.
But Hills (2003) on the other hand emphasizes that if
there is lack of commitment from top management then TQM
cannot be implemented in its entirely and also stress the fact
that the support that management takes in implementing a
total quality environment is very critical to the success of the
Total Quality Management Implement.
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1.2 CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
Total Quality Management is a management approach
which is aimed at incorporating awareness of quality in all
organizational processes. Many organization are striving for
quality products and services that will meet or exceed
customers expectation and as a result of this they are
searching for approaches to managing people and production
system that will assure the transformation of inputs into
quality output.
Much research has been done with regards to the
implementation of total quality management. Pheng and
Jasmine (2004) pointed out that with the adoption of TQM
there is the benefits of higher customer satisfaction, better
quality products and higher market shares. Customer
satisfaction is one of the prime objectives of TQM and it is the
most widely discussed approach to directing organizational
efforts towards the goal of customer satisfaction.
According to Hills (1991) TQM theory is based on:
continuous improvement, top management leadership and
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commitment to the goal of customer satisfaction, employee
empowerment and customer focus.
With the full adoption and implementation of TQM, there
should be a turn around in corporate culture and
management approaches as compared to the traditional way of
management in which the top management giving orders and
employees merely obeying them.
TQM is generally perceived to emphasize employee
empowerment and de-emphasize states distinction in an
organization.
An TQM organization is basically a customer oriented
organization and the organization should strive to maximize
customer satisfaction rather than internal efficiency and that
each person within the organization should consider the need
of the next person in line who uses its output.
The quality scholars have indicated that primarily the
employees build quality into an organization’s goods and
services. Hence the quality of products and services depends
heavily on employee empowerment, participation, morale,
motivation, compensation. It is believed that motivational
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theories when properly developed cause quality initiatives to
be successful. While others do not. Some of the motivational
theories in context are content theory, Expectancy theory,
Behaviour modification theory, Goal Setting theory, Equity
theory and job Design theory. The researcher shall devote the
cause of this research work on Goal Setting and Expectancy
theory because if properly developed, are most likely to bring
success to quality initiatives.
GOAL SETTING THEORY: The theory was proposed by
psychologist Edwin Locke, he says that the natural human
inclination to set and strive for goal is useful only if the
individual both understand and accepts a particular goal. He
further states that individuals are motivated when he behave
in ways that move them to certain clear goals that they accept
and can reasonably expect to attain.
Stoner (2007) describes Goals Setting as a process theory
of motivation that focus on the process of setting goals.
C. Earley and C. Shalley (2000) as edited by Stoner (2007)
describes the goal setting process in terms of four phases of a
person’s reasoning.
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1. Establishment of a standard to be attained.
2. Evaluation of whether the standard can be achieved
3. Evaluation of whether the standard matches personal
goals
4. The standard is accepted, the goal is thereby set and
behaviour proceeds towards the goal.
Edwin Lock also proposed that intention to work towards
a goal are a major source of work motivation. That is, goal tell
an employee what needs to be done and how much efforts will
need to be done and how much efforts will need to be
expended. We can also easily say that specific goals increase
performance; that difficult goals when accepted result in
higher performance than easy goals.
Goal commitment is most likely to occur when goals are
made public, when the employee has an internal locus of
control, and when the goals are self-set rather than assigned.
It is also believed that goals seems to have a more
substantial effect on performance when tasks are simple
rather than complex, well learned rather than novel.
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EXPECTANCY THEORY: This was propounded by Victor
Vroom. Expectancy theory argue that the strength of a
tendency to act in a certain way depends on the strength of an
expectation that the act will be followed by a given outcome
and on the attractiveness of that outcome to the individual.
Stonner (2007) States that it is a theory of motivation that
says that people choose how to behave from among alternative
course of behaviour based on their expectation of what there is
to gain from each behaviour. The strength of a tendency to act
in certain way depends in the strength of an expectation that
an act will be followed by a given outcome and on the
attractiveness of the outcome to the individual.
Robbins S. and Sanghi S. (2008) says that employee will
be motivated to exert a high level of effort when they believe
that effort will lead to a good performance appraisal; that a
good appraisal will lead to organizational reward such as a
bonus, a salary increase or a promotion and that the reward
will satisfy the employees personal goals and on the
organizational side will bring for a better corporate
performance by the employee.
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David Nadler and Edward Lawler describe four
assumption about behaviour in organization as edited by
Stonner (2007) on which expectancy approach is based.
1. Behaviour is determined by a combination of factors in
the individual and factors in the environment
2. Individuals make conscious decisions about their
behaviour in the organization.
3. Individual have different needs, desire and goals.
4. Individual decide between alternative behaviours on the
basis of their expectations that a given behaviour will
lead to a desired outcome.
1.3 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
The statement of problems in this study is to describe the
processes involved in the implementation of Total Quality
Management in an organization.
This study will also investigation if Total Quality
Management improves organizational performance.
This study will also investigate if organization that have
implemented Total Quality Management involves itself in
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continuous improvement of her products on the basis of
understanding customer needs and wants.
From this research investigation, some suggestion will be
made on how to improve Total Quality application in some
business organization.
1.4 THE OBJECTIVES OF STUDY
The objectives of the study involved the following
A To find out if Total Quality Management improves
organizations performance
B To find out how organizations perceives Total Quality
Management as a management strategy.
C To access the performance of organizations that
implemented Total Quality Management strategy and also
to access Total Quality Management as a future strategy
for implementing improvement strategy for organizational
performance.
1.5 HYPOTHESIS
1. There is no significant relationship between Total Quality
Management and organization performance.
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2. There is no significant relationship between continuous
improvement in services and organizational performance.
3. There is no significant relationship between the strategic
behaviour of the General Management and organization
performance.