sponsors

 

 

sponsors

 

 

 

 

Organization Focus

Before Total Quality Management implementation, upper management must first determine the organization’s common purpose or focus. This focus sets the stage for the implementation process. Focus consists of three elements: the vision, the mission statement, and values of the organization. The vision is where the organization wants to be in the future. It reflects the organization’s continuous quest for excellence and its pursuit to fulfill customer quality expectations. Top management creates the vision, but the entire organization must embrace it for it to have meaning. The mission statement describes the organization’s basic purpose and expected results. Values guide the organization’s conduct. They describe ways of communicating within the organization, guide relationships with customers, and generally establish ground rules for how the organization will operate. Once an organization determines its focus, it must begin empowering its employees.

Employee Empowerment

Empowering the workforce involves giving employees a degree of control over the organization’s operation. When empowered, employees feel they are an active part of the organization’s decision-making process and they have an organizational sense of "family." Once empowered, employees begin to take pride and ownership in their work, which may lead to improvement in their job performance, which then may increases overall organizational quality. As employees become more involved in the organization, they become self-motivated and do not require as much direct praise or monitoring from managers. As a part of the empowerment process, employees are permitted more management participation.

Participative Management

Participative management advocates using the cumulative skills and expertise of employees to solve problems and improve service quality. It calls for all members of an organization to share authority, responsibility, accountability, and decision making. Although it emphasizes group effort, a leader is needed who is responsible for keeping the group on track and making final decisions on group suggestions.

Delegation of responsibility and authority is required for participative management to be successful. Delegation is entrusting the responsibility and authority to complete a task to another person. Along with this trust comes accountability, which is holding the other person accountable for acceptable completion of the task. Many managers manage by the philosophy "If you want it done right, you have to do it yourself," so they find delegation difficult. Other managers do not mind delegating responsibility, but they are reluctant to delegate authority.

Page 6 of 12:  NEXT  Back  First  Last | Share | Errors | Last Modified:

Subtopics:  NEXT | None 

Topic:  Comments: Add View | Sources | Related: None