MGMT 3307- Quality Management

• Organizational Culture 


  This refers to the underlying set of key values, beliefs, understandings and norms shared by employees
• The underlying values and norms may pertain to:

  • ethical behaviours
  • efficiency
  • commitment to employees
  • customer service
• Culture:

  • provides people with a sense of organizational identity
  • generates a commitment to beliefs and values
  • generally begins with a founder or early leader who puts their ideas into a vision/philosophy
  • from the vision, an organizational culture emerges
• Functions of culture in organizations:

  1. integrate members so they know how to relate to each other
  2. help the organization adapt to the external environment
• Integrating Members: 


  internal integration helps members develop a collective identity and know how to work effectively by:

  • guiding day-to-day working relationships
  • determining how people communicate within the organization
  • governing what behaviour is acceptable and not acceptable
  • asserting how power and status are allocated
• Adapting to the external environment: 


  external adaptation refers to how the organizations meets goals and deals with external entities by:

  • guiding the daily activities of workers to meet certain goals
  • responding rapidly to customer needs or the moves of a competitor
• Functions of culture (2):

  1. support the organization's business strategy
  2. prescribe acceptable ways for managers to interact with stakeholders
  3. make staffing decisions
  4. set performance criteria
  5. guide the nature of acceptable interpersonal relationships
  6. select appropriate management styles
• Elements of Organizational culture:

  1. A business environment
  2. Organizational values
  3. Organizational rites, rituals and customs
  4. Cultural role models
  5. Cultural transmitters
• Identifying and Interpreting Culture:

  1. Symbols
  2. Rites and ceremonies
  3. Stories and myths
  4. Power relationships
  5. Control systems
  6. Organization structure
• Quality Culture 


  a quality culture is an organizational value system that results in an environment that is conducive to the establishment and continual improvement of quality. it consists of values, traditions, procedures and expectations that promote quality.
• Characteristics shared by organizations quality culture:

  1. work is done in teams
  2. education and training are provided so employees can continuously improve
  3. executives are committed and involved
  4. employees are empowered
  5. fellow employees are treated as internal customers
  6. suppliers are viewed as partners
  7. customer inputs are actively sought
• Quality Culture:

  • Operating philosophy: customer satisfaction
  • Objective: Plan strategically within the context of organizational vision (long and short term goals )
  • Management approach: managers are the coaches of the team and provide vision and encourage employee feedback and participation
  • Customers: customer satisfaction is the highest priority
• Quality Culture cont'd

  • problem-solving approach: focus is on finding the root cause of the problem and eliminating it
  • supplier relationship: suppliers are viewed as partners. they have a close relationship with customers and work together cooperatively
  • performance-improvement approach: continual improvements of processes, people and products and other factors affecting performance.
• Traditional culture:

  • operating philosophy: return on investment and short-term profit
  • objectives: short-term objectives
  • management approach: Managers think and employees do; clear cut hierarchical system
  • customers: more focus inward (internally) than on the customers
• Traditional culture cont'd:

  • problem-solving approach: finger pointing and waiting game when a problem occurs
  • supplier relationship: pressure is exerted on suppliers to bring down prices even if it affects the relationship
  • performance-improvement approach: erratic, reactive undertaking that is typically triggered by problems
• PDCA Model

  1. Plan
  2. Do
  3. Check
  4. Act/Adjust
• PLAN

  • conduct a diagnosis to identify existing problems, define priorities of what needs to be improved or detect new opportunities
  • Break down the goal into realistic and tangible objectives
  • Survey data and information to define the scope of work.
• PLAN CONT'D

  • Gather a quality team
  • Create an action plan with the tasks that must be performed in order to achieve objectives
  • Define deadlines, schedules and people responsible
  • Define key performance indicators (KPIs)
• DO

  • Important for the team to receive particular training to execute what's laid out in the plan
  • Collect data to monitor processes and measure results during execution
  • Record the positive and negative
• CHECK

  • Analyse the results
  • Have objective and quantitative parameters which are needed to properly assess process improvement and quality standards and to compare them to previous cycles.
  • identify problems or failures in the process, which can be adjusted later
• ACT/ADJUST

  • Focus on the actions to be implemented to correct the failures detected in the previous stage
  • Point out solutions to problems and amend planning according to the new results