Total Quality Management

I) How does team working play a part in TQM

1) Examples from literature

There are some well-established links between the use of team work and the development of Total Quality Management (TQM) programmes. Indeed, the notion of "team working" is central to TQM. Teamwork applies to all the members of the organisation. It can be considered from three aspects: teamwork within a natural working group, between different departments, and between managers and employees. In the context of TQM, team working is an important element and a condition for continuous improvement. It facilitates collaboration with a group of employee, the solving of problems and the sharing of information; it also develops employee's responsibility for managing quality performance and is seen to promote communication between employees and managers (Coyle-Shapiro, 1995).

TQM adheres to general principles in order to reach its aim, which is performing improving. People based management is among one of TQM's principles and two concepts are based on it: teamwork and people make quality. An author named Kanji has gathered those principles and concepts in a pyramid named "the pyramid principles of TQM".

Source: Kanji (1995), Total quality management: proceedings of the first world congress

Teamwork can provide an opportunity for people to work together in their pursuit of total quality in the case that they have not worked together before. By bringing people together with a common goal, the quality improvement becomes easier to communicate through departments. (Kanji, 1995: 5)

Teams are a management tool and are most effective when team activity is clearly linked to organisational strategy. Moreover, throughout any organisation, teamwork is an essential component of the implementation of TQM; it builds trust, improves communication and develops interdependence. Teamwork devoted to quality improvement changes the independence to interdependence through improved communication, trust and the sharing of ideas and information. However it is important to point out that employees cannot be motivated towards continual improvement in the absence of commitment to quality for top management, of organisational quality "climate" and of a mechanism for enabling individual contribution to be effective (Oakland, 1995: 270). Therefore team working is significantly involved in TQM.

Oakland also said that teams are added to the tools and system to complete the TQM model.

Source: John S. Oakland, 1995, Total Quality Management

According to Puffer and McCarthy (1996), team building, in a TQM organisation, is viewed as the key element to success in leadership behaviour. Some organisations are run by cross-functional teams which are "teams that bring together people with different expertise who

might never cross paths in a traditional organisation, although their work might be highly interdependent" (Slater, 1991). (Jabnoun, 2000, p397)

Nowadays, it becomes no longer the managers to solve problems but the teams. This change involves taking on new management roles. Furthermore, trust building, which is necessary for self-managed teams, is created thanks to the flexibility given to workers. This means workers have less supervision and less standardisation of the way the work is done. Thus, TQM requires the manager to take the role of coach than leader, and the working process to be considered as changeable rather than fixed. (Kossek and Lobel, 1996, p240)

According to Fiona M. Wilson (2004), TQM is usually an organisational-wide effort involving teams of employees and managers. It focuses on satisfying customer's needs and it can contribute to organisational learning and increase participation because as a team, workers find out the problems, analyse the source of error, find solutions and finally implement it.

Nayantara Padhi highlights 8 elements that ensure success in an organisation: ethics, integrity, trust, training, teamwork, leadership, recognition and communication. With the use of teams, the organisation will receive better and quicker solutions to the problems. Teams also provide more continuous improvements in processes and operations. In other words, people will feel more confident and comfortable bringing up problems that may arise, and can get help from other workers to find a solution and implement it. There are mainly 3 types of teams that TQM organisations adopt: Quality Improvement Teams or Excellence Teams (QITS), Problem Solving Teams (PSTs), Natural Work Teams (NWTs).

And Additionally, In Implementing TQM, Joseph Jablonski has identified three characteristics: participative management, continuous