Assessing the Significance of Leadership Improving Quality Management Systems

Assessing the Significance of Leadership in Improving Quality Management Systems

Assessing the Significance of Leadership in Improving Quality Management Systems

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Introduction 3

Background 4

Statement of the Problem 5

Research Objectives 6

Research Questions 6

Chapter Two: Literature Review 7

Total Quality Management 7

Customer Focus 8

Team-Work and Participation 9

Continuous Improvement 11

Leadership Theory and Practices 13

Chapter Three: Research Methodology 14

Research Design 15

Study Population 15

References 16

Chapter One: Introduction

Organizations are constantly exploring how they can remain competitive in a constantly changing business environment. Some of the common areas of review and improvement are the quality and performance of processes, procedures, and operations internally and externally. In the past two decades, organizations have adopted Total Quality Management (TQM) into their administration, management, and operation (Fan et al., 2016). The core elements of TQM are teamwork and participation, customer focus, and continuous improvement. These qualities operate in a triad structure that guarantees improved overall performance if implemented with the complimentary leadership values. However, the lack of the core values pertinent to the execution of TQM is a barrier to the positive performance outcome.

The commitment to management’s execution of TQM determines the successful implementation of TQM practices in the organization. Organizational leaders should not be limited by organizational tradition, such as decision-making and absolving their managerial responsibilities. Managers should exhibit more leadership than traditional management norms to increase employees’ awareness of quality activities in TQM adoption and practices (Dabestani et al., 2014; Lakshman, 2006). Conceptual leadership is seen as a combination of values, attitudes, traits, and behaviors that positively affect the organizations’ long-term performance. Organizational leaders are first managers and therefore possess the knowledge of management and inherently bear management’s responsibility. Conversely, not all managers bear the leadership qualities that leaders in an organization typically acquire through extensive training and experience, which gives them core leadership traits.

The practices embedded in the TQM and leadership overlap if the leaders’ practice embodies the core organizational values, vision, and mission. However, where an organization lacks leadership, TQM implementation requires extensive training from the staff and the leadership respective of the roles and responsibilities at different hierarchical levels (Bouranta, 2020). Both leadership and implementation of TQM have similarly routine behaviors where the emphasis is made to make changes in creating a team design and structuring combined with ultimate leadership behaviors. These behaviors include institutionalizing an organizational culture of quality, continuous improvement, and customer focus in the leadership.

Background

The dynamic business environment necessitates them to adopt new approaches to operations and administration to ensure they satisfy their customers and remain competitive. This approach to management requires the accommodation of a willingness to change in the organization for continuous improvement. TQM was largely adopted globally after its success in Japanese organizations and made up for the failures of the management practices practiced in the west. The core characteristics of TQM are commitment, involvement, and scientific knowledge to implement quality planning, quality control, and quality implementation (Al- Saffar and Obeidat, 2020). Notably, there are core areas where the roles and responsibilities in implementing TQM with leaders’ responsibilities at different organizational levels. However, the approach is not limited to leadership in exemption but is implemented at different organization levels.

While there is plenty of literature on leadership in organizations, there is a limited emphasis on quality management in this literature. The leadership theory may articulate some of the core concerns in the management but fails to address the difficulties in managing quality in an organization. This research aims to establish the core areas of leadership behaviors that are complementary to TQM practices. For example, the behavioral leadership theory promotes collaboration, teamwork, positive attitudes, core organizational values and beliefs, and relationships (Dabestani, Taghavi, and Saljoughian, 2014). The theory holds that leaders are not only born but can be natured. This realization in leadership studies led to more focus on implementing transformational leadership rather than transactional leadership. The adoption of transformational leadership that also integrated change management that also inherent in TQM. This study will explore how the integration of TQM as a strategic leadership approach to organizational leadership across different levels improves performance.

Statement of the Problem

The application of TQM in leadership to address the shortcomings that arise from the lack of quality management in leadership often results in poor performance in an organization. Leadership is not limited to making administrative or executive decisions but involves managerial roles and responsibilities in different organizational operation levels. As such, the development of leadership in the corporation should not be limited to top levels of operation but should be done across all levels. Attempts to address these shortcomings have been made by adopting transformational leadership. However, it still does not address the deficiencies of quality management in leadership across all organizational facets. This research proposal will present a theoretical framework that lays out how total quality management can be integrated into an organization’s leadership behaviors.

Research Objectives

This study aims to identify how TQM principles can be integrated into the leadership practices of an organization. To achieve this purpose, the following research objectives will be accomplished in different stages of the study:

I. Create an understanding of the core principles of total quality management and leadership individually.

II. To establish how TQM practices contribute to the success of the organization in performance wholly.

III. Establish the areas of overlap between leadership and TQM that contribute towards continuous improvement and management of quality in the organization internally and externally.

Research Questions

The general research question that this study seeks to answer is how can the TQM practices be integrated into multiple levels of the organization to achieve the benefits accrued to TQM as a central guiding framework of organizational leadership? The following are the specific research objective:

I. What are the core principles of TQM and contemporary leadership practices?

II. What are the similarities between TQM and leadership roles and responsibilities?

III. How does TQM affect the overall performance of the organization?

IV. How can TQM best practices be integrated into leadership to ensure quality management is practiced?

Justification

The study explores the manner total quality management can be integrated into leadership practices. While leadership studies are abundant, there is hardly any that focuses on quality management in leadership roles and responsibilities. Notably, the integration of TQM in the multi-level leadership position creates a culture of continuous improvement. The application of customer focus, continuous improvement, and engaging people stakeholders through effective communication as part of leadership is essential to account for the administration’s lack of quality control. The development of a leadership approach that has TQM embedded will help develop a quality-driven organizational culture that aims to improve continuously, leading to impressive performance.

Chapter Two: Literature Review

This section will review the core principles of TQM and some of the contemporary practices in management, such as transformational leadership. The section will also include a review of the behavioral theory of leadership that focuses on leaders’ behavior since the implementation of TQM involves the establishment of a new organizational culture and adjusting the employee’s behavior and attitudes (Zehir et al., 2012). the areas of similarities or where the concepts in any of the theories overlap will be identified. The benefits and the requirements for the effective implementation of TQM will also be examined.

Total Quality Management

The success of TQM led to its adoption as a strategic approach to achieve competitiveness globally. Initially, the practice was only exercised in Japanese corporations that adopted the Kaizen philosophy (Zehir et al., 2012). The management approach involved a critical examination of the process and customer needs and excluding all the wastage across the all-organizational operations (Nwaigwe, 2015). While Kaizen principles were not absorbed globally due to different value creation models, the TQM concept was adopted extensively due to its organizational development efficiency. Some of the core principles of TQM are discussed herein.

Customer Focus. TQM’s purpose of implementation is customer-centric since it focuses on meeting and exceeding customers’ expectations internally and externally. The customers are not perceived typically; rather, different hierarchical levels in the organization are perceived as customers of the preceding level, internal customers (Lakshman, 2006). These customers include subordinates, managers, or other departments that rely on the preceding stage in operations and become the customers of focus for this reason (Sadikoglu & Olcay, 2014). External customers are the consumers of the services or products offered by the corporation. The organization’s ultimate objective for adopting TQM is to focus all organizational operations on satisfying the customer (Al- Saffar & Obeidat, 2020). As such, profit is not the primary objective of operations, but sustainability is developing an organizational service to stay competitive.

The customer need’s determination is determined by assessing customer requirements that the organization can generate information that decision can be based upon. One of the TQM pillars to meet the challenges associated with development is making knowledge-based decisions (Zehir et al., 2012). The acquisition of this information fosters cross-hierarchical and cross-functional cooperation. Consequently, the leadership perspectives on customer focus necessitate forming an overarching vision that is convincing enough to align stakeholders. Notably, this purpose needs to be customer-focused to meet the needs of the organization simultaneously.

Team-Work and Participation. The success of TQM is hinged on the ability of the corporation to create feasible teams that work towards improving productivity and delivery of services. Creating an organizational culture of teamwork and participation is part of the leader’s responsibility (Al- Saffar & Obeidat, 2020). For teams to be functional, they have to be curated based on employees’ behaviors, such as skills set, personality, and attitude, to create functional and effective teams (Sadikoglu & Olcay, 2014). Leaders have to matriculate while designing teams and task forces aligned to the organization’s responsibilities. Consequently, some people are recommended for certain tasks compared to achieve the necessary efficiency for the position.

The success of TQM has been attributed to the participation of all the stakeholders in the decision-making process that makes them perceive their roles and responsibilities as their choice. TQM integration in the leadership propagates values and norms conducive to learning and information sharing that eases decision-making (Oriaku & Oriaku, 2011, Kanji, 2008). Information sharing is conducted horizontally and vertically in necessitating the abolition of a bureaucratic system in the information movement (Al- Saffar & Obeidat, 2020). Leaders have management information, while managers might not have leadership qualities that might be essential for executing their roles and responsibilities. Therefore, the leaders have to take the responsibility of motoring their subordinates as leaders to embody the essential behaviors in the execution of the duties at their level of operation.

The engagement of employees and stakeholders at the organizations as partners responsible for the corporation’s success makes it possible for the corporation to meet its strategic goals. The multi-level leadership approach articulates the strategies that a corporation adopts to achieve effectiveness in the corporation towards realizing organizational expectations (Oriaku & Oriaku, 2011). This approach highlights the complex tasks and efficiently measures several methods determining employees’ capability since it aims to improve an organization’s performance and profitability (Dabestani et al., 2014). Rather than focus on directing organizational efforts to generate profit, workers’ engagement in making core decisions builds a framework for leadership grounded on building a culture of continuous quality improvement based on the core principles of total quality management and addressing broad organizational concerns.

Figure 1: Information sharing triad that fosters participation and efficacy in design working teams (Zehir et al., 2012).

Continuous Improvement

TQM holds that achieving sustainability in an organization is only realized through continuous improvement of quality in the organizational process as a never-ending process. The room for improvement can always be realized in improving the quality of the products and services, operations, or the review of the organizational goals and vision (CPSL, 2010.). While the organization is limited in the options of improvement, the corporation should look into its customers’ needs internally and externally and explore the needs that are yet to be met (Lodgaard et al., 2016). Some tools that can be applied to identify areas of improvement are Pareto analysis, flow charts, ?shbone diagram, and statistical process control. These tools highlight areas where inefficiency is apparent or likely to occur, making it possible for the corporation to address the deficiencies in its process or operations through continuous improvement.

The leaders need to institute the value of continuous improvement in the organizational culture and relate with other stakeholders to reflect this quality. The TQM approach in leadership perceives leadership as a responsibility that is part of managers’ capabilities at different organization levels. The core principles of TQM hold that all corporations, notwithstanding the hierarchies and tiers of operation, should customer-centric and seek continuous improvement through the persistent engagement of people. The integration of leadership into different levels is essential and perceives all the people involved to lead others towards the realization of the organizational objectives. Of importance is creating a core purpose that the employees can identify with, which drives them to work towards realizing the organizational objectives (Khan et al., 2017). Hence, employee appraisal is essential to meet the employees’ individual goals as part of the internal customers. The leadership needs to recognize that there are fiscal losses for deviating from the organization’s strategic goal. This approach is conscious that customers will not always complain but rather switch to a competitor where some of their concerns are taken care of without raising complaints.

The learning and improvement cycle is the foundation of TQM and necessitates integrating the Plan, Do, Study, and Act Cycle (PDSA). This approach makes it possible for the leadership to evaluate all its processes and make the necessary changes towards continuous improvement (Isniah et al., 2020). Previous management models only focused on the delivery of superior products without taking into consideration how this quality would be realized; however, the integration of TQM in the management involves a holistic approach to quality in organizational production operations and services in areas of interaction with the external business environment (Isniah et al., 2020). As such, the corporation needs to make changes in developing a common understanding of the differences associated with a common understanding of these differences.

Figure 2: The Deming Cycle of continuous improvement (Isniah et al., 2020).

Leadership Theory and Practices

The different leadership theories in contemporary management have moved from the traditional models driven by individual performance and competition within the organization for success towards the improvement of employees and operations for success. Transformational leadership is predicated on the positive relationships between the employees and the management. The managers taking on leadership responsibilities include employees’ motivation and reaffirming its purpose (Sadikoglu & Olcay, 2014). Transformational leadership’s primary elements are personalized considerations, ideological influence, knowledge-driven decision-making, and motivation (Wilson et al., 2006). Individualized considerations involve considering the differences in interpersonal relationships with the employees to address their individual and position concerns (Bouranta, 2020; Korejan & Shahbazi, 2016). Inspiration and motivation make it critical for the development of teams that are oriented towards organizational goals. As such, the leaders must reflect the values central to the corporation’s organizational goals.

Ideological influence is the sharing of information that may not be purview to other stakeholders. The leaders’ moral and ethical conduct makes it possible for the employees to adhere to their job description and requirements following their leader’s professionalism (Bouranta, 2020; Glen et al., 2009). The leaders’ intellectual responsibility is to be cautious but not fail to take the risk that may result in developing an informed decision that benefits all the organization’s stakeholders (Korejan & Shahbazi, 2016). These transformational leadership elements are mirrored in TQM and proven effective in organizations such as Apple and Amazon. Behavioral leadership theory focuses on the leadership properties that make it possible for the corporation to address the differences associated with developing common interests.

Chapter Three: Research Methodology

A qualitative methodology will be used for this study and will focus on determining the relationship of core TQM elements with contemporary leadership practices such as transformational leadership. Qualitative methodologies rely on continuous data or categorical data encoded into numerical figures to explore the relationship of variables in a study. In this study, the Structural Equation Modeling to examine the nature of a relationship between the elements of TQM, customer focus, teamwork and participation, and continuous improvement, and sharing knowledge and leadership properties such as personalized considerations, ideological influence, knowledge-driven decision making, and motivation (Bag, 2015).