2.1.29 Organizational Culture Case Study

1.2.1.29 Organisational Culture. This sub-category describes how an organisation develops a culture and supports behaviours which are consistent with its values, and encourage achievement of organisational objectives. Most of the studies which addressed this issue focused on manufacturing companies. For example, Harber et al. (1993a) studied a large business enterprise within the electronics industry. They found TQM to be an excellent program to bring about massive change in both social and technological components of a workplace. They concluded that understanding organisational culture and its relevance to TQM will greatly assist managers to operationalise programs such as TQM that seek to harness the knowledge and skills of employees in
It consists of those activities designed to provide for and coordinate the people of an organization (Byars and Rue, 1991). According to some quality experts it is also the only resource that can synergize – that is, produce output whose value is higher than the sum of its parts. When asked about the ‘secret’ behind the superior products, one manager from Toyota’s Kentucky plant, a three time winner of the Power Gold Plant Quality Award, replied “We’ve got nothing, technologywise, that anyone else can’t have. There’s no secret Toyota quality machine out there. The quality machine is the workforce …” (Bergstorm, 1995). The people management consists of activities which include recruiting, selecting, training and developing, counseling, motivating, and rewarding employees and handling other matters of employee well-being. studies showed that about 74% of the reviewed articles (27) focused on the people aspects of TQM. According to Australian Quality Council (2000) this criterion of ABE framework explores the way in which all people are encouraged and enabled to make a personally satisfying contribution to the achievement of the organisation’s objectives. Authors of these studies discussed people management from several perspectives which can be categorised into involvement and commitment, effectiveness and development, and health, safety and
Quality gurus have actively promoted quality training and education. Two of Deming’s 14 points (points 6, 13) are devoted to these issues. Training generally includes quality awareness, teamwork, problem solving, using data for making decisions, process analysis, process simplification, waste reduction, cycle time reduction and other issues that effect employee effectiveness and efficiency. Many studies have addressed this sub-category. While studying a large manufacturing organisation De Cieri et al. (1991) found that the most effective TQM education and training involved the integration of TQM principles and statistical skills with their ‘hands-on’ application to real world problems faced by employees. In an empirical study

1.2.1.35 Health, Safety and Well-being This sub-category of the ABE Framework describes how organisations provide work environments conducive to maximising potential of their employees and which recognizes well-being as a critical component of organisational success. As employees are key stakeholders of any organization, their health, safety and well-being are important factors in the work environment. Only two studies addressed the issue of employee well-being and satisfaction (Harber, et al., 1991a; Harber, et al.,