| EDITORIAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT: LEARNING FROM FAILURES Carlos Noronha & Su Mi Park Dahlgaard Issue 26 (Vol. 13, No. 2), December 2003, pp. 137-138 Total Quality Management (TQM) is a philosophy rather than a management tool or technique. It is a long-term endeavor. Failures are often believed to be reflections of misunderstandings of the central philosophy of TQM. Throughout all these years, we have been hearing and seeing failures in implementing TQM. However, seldom is the case that such failures are documented in detail. On the contrary, success cases are very often described to the very minute details and prescriptive points of success are thus recommended. Sometimes the points are so prescriptive that a causal relationship is nearly implied. But can we say that we will succeed if we follow these points and fail if we do the opposite? It is clear to everyone that the other side of a white coin is not necessarily black. In order to really learn from failures, we need to understand the failure cases, but not implying from the reverse of the success cases. The purpose of this special issue is to report on the latest experiences in implementing TQM and the genuine problems and difficulties faced by organizations, so as to eventually learn from these well-documented cases. Since the call for paper was disseminated in mid 2002, we have received a satisfactory number of submissions. From these submissions we now present eight intriguing peer reviewed papers. Some of them were also selected as outstanding papers from the 6th Annual Quality Management and Organizational Development (QMOD) Conference held in Paris. The first paper by Ahmed and Zairi brings out an interesting concept of �average organizations�. They present detailed descriptions of five average companies and the difficulties they encountered in sustaining TQM and propose guidelines for average companies to achieve excellence. Swaffin-Smith and Barnes take a more radical approach by questioning what is so different about TQM. They focus on why employees take a medium-term response to TQM. From three case studies they conclude that culture is a very important element. Yusof Ismail and Farag Saleh present their empirical findings concerning the success and failure of 27 Malaysian industrial firms in implementing quality standards. The lack of training skills contributes largely to the difficulties and barriers. Kujala and Lillrank analyze the hidden underlying assumptions of TQM based on the cultural model and apply it to the case of a company which does not have an organizational culture congruent with the cultural model of TQM. Ramis-Pujol addresses the question of sustaining process innovation. Through using four retrospective and one longitudinal case study, he identifies the barriers and facilitators for process innovation and concludes that a quality environment is not enough for sustaining process innovation and continuous improvement is often over simplified. Wong and Dahlgaard report their in-depth case study of an aluminium extrusion company which uses the EFQM Excellence Model to identify failures and weaknesses in a self-assessment process and how this method can be extended to identify inter-departmental resistance to quality improvement efforts. Zhao documents the problems and difficulties Siemens encounter in implementing a business performance and sustainability improvement program. Last but not least, Salsbury and Davis provide us with a detailed narrative of the Bridgestone/Firestone tire recall in 2000 which resulted from blowouts causing death and injuries. This article will be of immense interests especially to practitioners. It is hoped that these carefully documented cases will help us learn from failures so as to manifest the plan-do-check-act spirit in TQM. We gratefully acknowledge the anonymous reviewers who served for this special issue as well as the scientific panel of the QMOD conference for their valuable time, effort, and constructive comments. |