Quality and Depth

Abstract

Quality has become the British management obsession of the 1980s and 1990s, with quality initiatives apparendy being introduced in three-quarters of companies in the UK (Wilkinson and Wilmott: 1). Such initiatives are no longer confined to the private manufacturing sector: the language of quality has spread into the service sector, the public sector, even into universities. Piecemeal quality circle initiatives have been replaced by carefully planned and well-resourced Total Quality Management programmes. However, organisational theorists have been slow to address, from a critical perspective, the TQM movement, perhaps in the belief that it would be another short-lived management 'fad' soon to be succeeded. Most of the writing on TQM has emanated from academics coming from an operational management perspective who have tended to be unequivocally positive. It is, indeed, difficult to argue against the notion that 'quality', like 'mother hood', is self-evidently a 'good thing', even if it is sometimes difficult to establish exactly what 'quality' means. Furthermore, if TQM genuinely means that first line employees receive better training, are given more opportunities to participate in decision-making, are given more responsibility and more interesting work, are these not precisely the types of changes to work that most organisational theorists would like to see? McArdle et al., in Wilkinson and Wilmott, quote worker comments which would seem to suggest that TQM can indeed reach the parts that job enrichment and quality of working life initiatives cannot. Thus 'it (TQM) has given me a new lease of life. I'd rather work that way. It's hard work with more responsibility and more worry, but there is a lot more job satisfaction' (164). Does it matter if the primary aim of TQM is to reduce waste and inefficiency, and improved quality of working life is only a by-product, if improved quality of life does result? However, TQM has flourished at a time when organisations are coping with increased competitive pressures, have frequently downsized and de-layered their management hierarchies. Is it just another tool through which senior managers can force fewer people to work more intensively for the same rewards, unable to resist through fear of unemployment? Making Quality Critical is part of Routledge's labour process analysis series, 'Critical Perspectives on Work and Organization'. The nine papers in the volume focus on various aspects of quality initiatives, from the 'quality revolution' in the public sector (Walsh), to the changing role of managers with the introduction of TQM (Munro), to the impact of quality programmes on training (Roberts and Corcoran-Nantes) and the empowerment of service workers (Kerfoot and Knights). All but one of the papers (Dawson, writing about Australia) focus on