Improving the way Total Systems Interventions are used in Total Quality Management

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Improving the way Total Systems Interventions are
used in Total Quality Management

• Petter Øgland
• NEON 2008 Conference, Tromsø, Nov 26th 2008

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Problem

• How to select a design strategy for total quality
  management (TQM) for achieving optimal payoff in
  an organization that is not seriously motivated
  to do TQM?

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Two perspectives

• Brunsson et al (2000) Organizations want to be
  seen as complying with ISO 9000 and TQM, but the
  do not want to do what is required
• Flood (1993) Critical social theory (Adorno,
  Habermas, Foucault, ) should be used as a
  foundation for TQM to liberate and improve social
  standards while improving business processes

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Hypothesis

• If we look at TQM as knowledge management, then
  the situation becomes political (relationship
  knowledge/power), we can use Floods idea, and
  the TQM implementation process becomes stable

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Total Systems Intervention (Flood Jackson, 1991)

• Creativity
• Use Morgans metaphors for describing the
  organization (problem)
• Choice (SOSM)
• Viable Systems Methodology (Beer, 1972)
• Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 1981)
• Critical Systems Heuristics (Ulrich, 1983)
• Implementation

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Triple loop learning (Flood Romm, 1996)2-loop
learning (Argyris, 1978) might is right?
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Design of experiment for testing
hypothesesDesign science design QMS evaluate
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Case study

• Unit within public sector organization
• Approx 20 people (system designers computer
  programmers)
• Average age 40, male/female balanced
• Working according to life cycle model
• There is a documented QMS
• First version of information system established
  1998 system is now mature and work is concerned
  with annual updates and new functionality
• Generally seen as one of the better units of the
  organization (role model)

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Case study Technical results
0 Bad
Unstructured changes in format (improvements) re
gister as decline in documentation quality
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Evolution of QMS social perspective

• Year 1 Distribution of TQM results sideways and
  upwards. Emotional stir and frustration.
  Complaints to head of corporation (saved by QMS
  owner)
• Year 2 Small improvements, people complain that
  products are important, not processes
• Year 3 Audits show that not only process is of
  low quality, but predictions about product
  development are bad too.
• Post-experiment The methodology is rewritten to
  achieve better scores without achieving better
  quality

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Null hypothesis rejected? Hmmm
SPC-charts for hypothesis testing (Shewhart,
1939) H1 stable process H0 unstable
process Need to argue qualitatively for rejecting
H0
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Analysis discussion
Create vertical tension by reporting TQM result
one level above internal customer
Create horizontal tension by benchmarking TQM
results
Make sure the QMS owner is The winner of the
political game of TQM
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Conclusion

• Use of critical theory for implementing TQM makes
  the process unpredictable (Suchman, 2007)
• Three years of data was not sufficient for
  statistical reasoning, but there were no
  indications of the TQM implementation process not
  being stable (it seems to work)