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QUALITY[1]
From nidhuv
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Quality: The Basis for a Transcendental Global Culture
Gregory H. WatsonChairman, Business Excellence Solutions, Ltd.President, International Academy for Quality, Helsinki, Finlandgreg@excellence.fi
Abstract
Quality is a basic concept of mankind. The core of its meaning comes from a Sumerianword that has the root meaning of “freedom.” Freedom is at the core of the democratic process through the idea of “equality” – a word whose etymology includes the notion of quality. Equality focuses on the common rights to a valuable quality of life. Using thisinterpretation, we can understand the concept “freedom” from this perspective as being free of waste, bigotry, abuse – elimination of these negative aspects of life’s experiencesand thereby improve the quality of our life. However, over the years the interpretationand application of the word quality has come to have more and more diverse meanings.Quality can be considered a philosophy, methodology, vocation, field of study, movement,engineering discipline, attribute of a product or service, and outcome of a process. So,what is quality and how should a modern quality manager seek to apply the term to build a way of working that seeks to have continuously excellent outcomes? This paper willdevelop a “meta-definition” of quality that transcends its applications and serves as a foundation for a more coherent global human culture based on precepts of this qualitydefinition.Keywords:Quality Definition, Philosophy, Leadership, Implementation, and Management
What is the Meaning of Quality?
One problem with our global quality community is that we give the impression that when wespeak of quality we’re talking about differing degrees of “goodness” – as in a high qualitypurchased item or a low quality service experience. Everyone then pretends to know what itmeans. But, it can’t work that way because a good definition should be reliable – it shouldhave integrity and be both measurable and auditable. However, we should take comfort in thefact that even our most revered quality guru’s of the past century couldn’t agree on a commondefinition of quality, so each created their own definition and this caused their views on qualityto diverge as they emphasized different aspects of quality instead of understanding how theirviews are complementary and part of a holistic model of quality. Here is a collection of thesedifferent definitions that I’ve collected over the years:
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Quality is fitness for use.
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Quality is whatever the customer says it is.
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Quality is a way of managing.
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Quality is continuous improvement.
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Quality is conformance to requirements as measured by the price of nonconformance.
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Quality is an organization-wide process.
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Quality is what the customer says it is.
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Quality and cost are a sum, not a difference.
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Quality requires zealotry in both individuals and teams.
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Quality and innovation are mutually dependent.
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Quality is an ethic.
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Quality is the most cost effective, least capital intensive route to productivity.
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Quality is implemented as a total system connected to customers and suppliers.One quality writer even simplified his definition of quality by humorously stating: “I’ll know it whenI see it!” But, is quality so subjective that we can never really understand what it is?Quality is one of those words we have used for our entire life and have assumed that we know itsmeaning. In this respect the word “quality” is much like the word ‘love’ – we think we know what itmeans, but we only discover the true meaning of love as we are engaged experiencing it. Likewise,our understanding of quality has evolved over the years from the time of the early Greeks when adebate occurred between quality as a function (the idea of Plato) and quality as excellence (an ideathat was offered by Aristotle). We should also take comfort in the fact that it seems that throughouthistory mankind has never had a clear understanding of what quality means. Thus, the word qualityhas often been confusing, and it is seldom used without controversy. Just like love, quality is oftensubjectively defined which gives rise to this quixotic definition of quality as “I’ll know it when I seeit!” This subjectivity is not a new phenomenon and it works fine for our everyday life experience;however, when we become professionally responsible for assuring the quality of a product or service,then we need a much more substantial operational definition so we can work collectively to assure theexcellence that is required for our situation.What is quality? It is a contrast – it is what a producer makes as well as what a consumer uses. It isan attribute as an indicator of goodness and it is a variable as in a measure of performance. Quality isa noun, an adverb, and an adjective – and all require an active verb to make the ‘resultant’ qualityhappen; quality never results from taking a passive approach to anything. So, in order to understandwhat quality has become in today’s language, we must first learn about where quality ideas originated,how they developed into a movement, and how they became a profession as well as a way of life. Asone reality we observe that quality is a word like love or beauty that gains meaning in ‘the eye of thebeholder’ because it is interpreted individually. It seems that this division in the approach to qualityhas always existed.The concept of quality has been influenced by two areas of emphasis: one focused on the process bywhich results are developed and the other on the attributes defining acceptable results. These twoconcepts cause some people to regard quality by just its processes for delivery (tools and methods),others focus on the contents or attributes that are delivered as outcomes of work, while still othersfocus on combining the methodologies with the attributes in a systemic approach to an operationaldefinition of quality. This confusion in understanding the meaning of quality provides a challenge formodern leaders who wish to manage a single organizational culture across divergent national, social,and cultural boundaries as distinctions in the meaning and interpretations of the concept of quality iscompounded by their need to define an organizational culture that works equally well in all locationsglobally. With this challenge comes the requirement to establish a common ground that pulls peopleand organizations together around a unifying principle that forges a common bond of shared values.Many business leaders oversee multinational or global operations and they are rightfully concernedabout how to manage appropriately in the face of cultural diversity. Should they create a‘transcendent’ culture for their organization that sits above regional or national cultures? How shouldan organization develop teams that can function in a ‘high-performing’ manner when the teams comefrom different cultural perspectives? Cultural diversity provides an opportunity to understand theunique perspectives of different markets and customer bases which yields insight into ways to adaptproducts or services to meet the unique needs of these markets and enhance local competitiveness.However, this diversity also has an effect of separating organizations along the lines of sub-cultureswhere there are stronger ideological attractions than for the organization as a whole. Thus manyorganizations become collections of sub-cultures and do not operate consistently across their culturalboundaries.
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Transcendent Thinking: Linking Humanity through Quality
As a preamble to my definition, I offer the following thesis: quality transcends all boundaries of race,nations and geography and is part of the core of mankind – what makes us humans is the desire to bemore – to improve our lives and quality of living. No matter what our starting point, the human racealways seems to cry: Excelsior! Ever-higher! Let’s keep improving – excellence in the execution of our work to achieve excellence in its outcome! Thus, if we appeal to this nature of mankind, it shouldbe clear that there is something common – a transcendent aspect of quality that we all follow that canbecome the core of broadest definition of quality that we can achieve.In order to establish clearly my perspective in this paper, I’d like to state that this issue of defining themeaning of quality is not something that can be resolved in a single writing or over time. But, we canmake progress toward developing a comprehensive definition that works universally. Thus, the stepthat I propose in this paper is to get the overall framework right – the “transcendental” aspect definingquality, then to move forward in the future and examine the next sub-level in a definition to discoverwhat more detailed components of the definition might also belong to the “transcendental” qualityframework and which might be more appropriately defined locally.Having established this perspective, the purpose of paper will be to establish a meaning for qualitythat works for a “global transcendental culture” that applies to all mankind. This paper describes asocially-defined model for competitive advantage that uses the cultural dimensions of quality to driveenhanced organizational performance. This model is coordinates the quality approaches of ISO9000,the European Quality Award criteria, as well as Six Sigma methods for design and problem-solving.Identifying those business methods or practices that unify organizations in the face of cross-culturaldiversity will be the focus of defining a global quality value proposition for organizations that iscapable of driving sustainable excellence.
0510152025303540
Return onInvestment(ROI)
R e l at i v e M ar k e t S har e
H i gh 6 0 % 2 5 % Lo w
R e l a t i v e P e r c e i v e d Q u a l i t y ( P e r c e n t i l e )
SuperiorInferior67%33%
Figure 1: Perceived Quality Drives Market Share and Profitability
Defining the Concept of Quality
Quality is actually a neutral concept – neither positive nor negative in itself. The implications of theword quality, both good and bad, are derived mainly due to the connection of the concepts of quality
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Quality: The Basis for a Transcendental Global Culture
Quality is a basic concept of mankind. The core of its meaning comes from a Sumerian word that has the root meaning of freedom. Freedom is at the core of the democratic process...
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| Upload Date: | 01/13/2009 |
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