| VIOLATION OF BASIC ASSUMPTIONS: ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE BASED APPROACH FOR ANALYZING AND IMPROVING TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION PROGRAMS Jakko Kujala & Paul Lilrank Issue 26 (Vol. 13, No. 2), December 2003, pp. 191-202 Total quality management (TQM) is often considered universally applicable for any type of business or organization. However, the success of TQM based development programs varies significantly and many of them do not produce the desired outcomes. The failure of implementation programs is generally not attributed to problems with the content or principles of the discipline, but simply to a lack of management commitment or an implementation failure. In this paper content and underlying hidden assumptions of TQM are analyzed using a cultural model of TQM, which is constructed based on Schein's model of organizational culture. The practical value of the proposed model is illustrated by analyzing TQM implementation problems in a project-oriented organization. It is proposed that TQM implementation programs are significantly influenced by existing organizational culture and in some cases the organization should not pursue quality management based approaches. |