Total Quality Management: Some Thoughts

Author(s): Peter Williams

Source: Higher Education, Vol. 25, No. 3, Total Quality Management in Higher Education
(Apr., 1993), pp. 373-375
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3447802
Accessed: 15-10-2016 16:08 UTC

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Higher Education 25: 373-375, 1993.
? 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Total Quality Management: some thoughts

PETER WILLIAMS
Director, Division of Quality Audit, Higher Education Quality Council, 52 Pritchatts Road, Univers
of Birmingham. Edgbaston, Birmingham, B15 2IT, UK

These comments are a personal view on the preceding papers. Readers of

papers will have gained an unusually candid insight into the corporate minds (i
the souls) of a number of institutions of higher education, But they will also
found themselves faced, yet again, with that most intractable of questions, wh
quality. Not surprisingly, an easy answer is not to be found here: we are in P
country once again, finding our way along that long and winding route throug
mountains of the spirit.
The Basic Question is that: is TQM (or TQ or QM) fit for its purpose?
unanswerable question until the next has been addressed: what is its purpose:
to do with quality, or is it to do with power? Two very different perspectiv
presented in the cases described in the seminar papers: TQM viewed
management tool to increase productivity, keep the customers happy, an
down waste (the power model); the TQM as a means of making us better peop
of developing our professional good manners, and providing us with a m
education (the quality model). But the papers do all seem to have one thi
common; they describe the introduction of TQM as a response to a cri
- financial, organisational, or social. Interest in it has also for the most
been born of corporate or individual frustration and fear: 'Surely there must
better way?', says the weary head of department, or 'There's going to
better way!', says the Director. Whatever causes the flywheel to start mo
TQM is concerned principally with changes to attitudes and institutions. But
papers also describe an approach that requires commitment, dedication, humi
and tact on the part of all concerned, and these qualities are not always i
supply.
Watching from outside, from a neutral standpoint, what looks valuable, what
looks usable from the particular experiences described? Roger Ellis's list is helpful
here: explicitness of ends and means; an awareness of the value and importance of
service; cost effectiveness; and the promotion of individual motivation to do things
well, would appear to be critical to the well-being of any institution of higher
education. The list echoes others, such as the seven basic questions of the Division
of Quality Audit of the Higher Education Quality Council: what are you trying to
do? why are you trying to do it? how are you doing it? why are you doing it that
way? why is that the best way of doing it? how do you know it works? how do you
improve it? In addressing matters such as these, TQM may well be a valuable
antidote to complacency and, as such, offer an effective way of developing a sense

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374

of common enterprise and interest, as a successor principle to the now fast-receding

notion of collegiality.
The virtues listed above are more than ever needed in higher education. But is
the adoption of a complex 'top-down' organisation and philosophical structure the
best way to nurture them? Indeed, would not such a structure be inevitably
doomed? If all links in the customer/supplier chain are interdependent, then the
chain is only as strong as its weakest link, and who in an institution of higher
education, would ever, using whatever management system, be prepared to rely
exclusively on the strength of its weakest link? What, then, of the 'bottom-up'
approach, where the impetus for change comes not from management, but from
those who actually do the teaching? Deborah Cowles shows that this can be a
powerful force, but is always subject to possible defeat by resistance from above. In
that circumstance, it may be argued that the consequences of failure are likely to be
more damaging to staff morale than not trying at all. It is nonetheless interesting
that in the United States the pressure to introduce TQM principles appears to have
come largely from the base of institutional hierarchies, while in the United
Kingdom its potential value seems to have been perceived primarily from the apex.
Does TQM work in higher education? It is too soon to say. All the papers
describe work in progress, and none lays claim to total achievement; it is, in any
case, probably inappropriate to judge a continuing process of this kind in terms of
completed success. But questions can be asked about the likelihood of its longer-
term survival as a significant method in the organisation of higher education. Being
a technique based around people, and relying on their commitment to motivation,
will it outlast, in any one institution, the departure from the scene, in the normal
effiuxion of time, of its chief advocates? If the Vice-Chancellor retires, what
happens then? What would a TQM organisation in its steady-state look like? How
could the necessary enthusiasm and commitment be maintained over a long period?
How would new employees be inducted into the intense, group-based ethos which
appears to typify the TQM-inspired body? Is it a high-tech solution to a low-tech
problem? More worrying to some, perhaps, is the possibility that TQM is
essentially not more than a compliance-based management device, palliated by
attempts to give all involved an illusory sense of personal ownership.
Whatever the chances of its long-term survival, the reader of the papers cannot
but be struck by the marked number of correspondences between the rhetoric and
practices of TQM and those of evangelical (if not fundamentalist) Christianity. In
both there is a missionary zeal; they both have their formal communal activities
(services, house groups, quality circles, process groups) and their liturgies. Prophets
and gurus abound, as do authorized and much quoted texts; sects claiming
allegiance to one or other tradition and prophet (Deming, Juran) have their
unswerving adherents; and all demand a personal subservience to the demands of
the approved doctrine. Enthusiasm (in the 18th century sense of the word)
dedication, commitment, humility, trust and faith are required and assumed. Both
also attract devoted sceptics demanding proof. The true believer of both faiths has
little time for non-conformity, eccentricity or unorthodoxy, or for licensed deviants.
Most importantly, they both seek to convert (called transformation in TQM) and in

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 375

this activity the notion of the 'born again Chief Executive' is particularly
memorable. Perhaps we should look to the evangelical and charismatic church
movement to divine the future of TQM.
We shall not know for a number of years whether TQM works in higher
education. Certainly, there are now enough schemes to make assessment possible in
due course. Equally, there are enough crises, frustrations and fears to provide fertile
ground for its development And there are very talented people involved in its
promulgation as this collection of papers clearly shows. It would be encouraging to
think that this event could be repeated in five or ten years' time, when the new
world of quality management will have had time to weather down. By then, of
course, there may be no need for such a meeting: TQM will be taken for granted as
the natural style of institutional organisation in higher education. Or it may have
been forgotten. Either way, we shall all have to bear in mind the maxim of John
Ruskin: 'Quality is not an accident. It is always the result of intelligent effort'.

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