The main theorists

Quality management appears to be firmly established in the public mind as

having close links with the development of Japanese business and industry.
However, the philosophy that underpins the development of what is known today
as quality management is, primarily, American in origin. During the Second World
War engineers and statisticians in the USA and in the UK's Ministry of Defence
pioneered work on quality control in the weapons industry. It was from the
activities to improve the accuracy and reliability of armaments that quality
management developed. However, the two key figures in this developmental work,
W. Edwards Deming and Joseph Juran, were 'prophets' who achieved recognition
in Japan some decades before their home nation recognized the importance of their
work. The post-war boom in demand in the USA and Europe meant that
manufacturing companies could sell almost anything regardless of its quality, and
this mitigated against any serious consideration of the potential benefits offered by
quality management.

In the UK, where there were no dominant theorists, the work begun during
the Second World War continued to be developed, particularly in the field of
quality assurance. The British Standard 5750 achieved post war dominance in the
military, industrial and manufacturing sectors as being the primary mode of
inspecting and assuring the quality of products and manufacturing processes
(Jackson and Ashton, 1993). It is perhaps because of the way in which quality in
the UK has, largely, developed along the inspection and measurement route set out
in the British Standard, that its application in sectors where there is no tangible
product has been more problematic. In recent years, the work of practitioners and
academics including Pfeffer and Coote (1991), Stewart (1989), and Walsh and Da
vis (1993) has served to focus on the way in which a less inspection-oriented
approach and more democratically open approach to quality could be successfully
applied in public sector organizations. Indeed, Wilson and Game (1994) argue that
a great deal of developmental work in the quality management field is to be found
in local authorities, where the external pressures for change and realignment in
service provision have proved powerful catalysts. Similarly, the National Health
Service is presented by Williamson (1992) as being an active testing ground of
methodologies associated with quality management.

The development of much of the underpinning philosophy of quality

management can be traced to the aftermath of the Second World War when the
USA effectively controlled Japan's reconstruction programme. Deming, in a
pivotal role, taught the Japanese to focus on causes of variance, and to differentiate
between special causes and common causes, in their fledgling manufacturing
industries. Common causes he identified as being those which could not be
assigned to local variations, but which stem from a flaw in the process design
itself. He advocated the adoption of process development and control systems that
were reliant upon harnessing the expertise of all employees who came into contact
with them for their evolution and improvement.

Deming's approach was above all systematic and was formalized into what
became known as the Deming Wheel the Plan, Do, Check, Action cycle. His
methodology extended beyond process control to include the customer as a central
focus for quality improvement and development. His vision was one where
customers were the most important part of the production line. It was not enough to
aspire simply to satisfy their existing 'needs'. Improvement potential was perceived
to come from broadening this focus to include a consideration of previously
unexpressed perceptions and desires.
 Although the bulk of his philosophy was developed in the 1950s, it was not
until the early 1980s when the USA experienced a crisis of confidence in its
traditional manufacturing base, that the lessons that had been learned so well by
the Japanese achieved a resonance in the country of their origination. Deming,
anxious to build upon the interest being expressed in his work, developed a 14
point approach, set out in the Appendix to this section, the adoption of which he
regarded as being essential if Western business and industry were to compete on
equal terms with their Eastern counterparts.

Mann (1989), in his comprehensive study of Deming's work, encapsulates

his major achievements: 'Deming is the person who established Quality as the
overriding management principle...'. Conway, formerly chairman of Nashua, and
now head of his own major management consultancy, refers to Deming as the
'founder of the third wave of the industrial revolution' (Mann, 1989). The first
wave, Conway explains,was the widespread mechanization that began with British
textile factories in the eighteenth century. The second, he says, began in the USA
early in the twentieth century with Taylorism and Fordism. These theories meant
reducing a job to the simplest functions, applying efficiency programmes and
producing in mass. The use of statistical analysis to solve the problems of both
production and service and the attendant possibilities of customer and employee
involvement, constitutes the third wave.

Joseph Juran, a contemporary of Deming, is the quality theorist most

frequently linked with him in reviews of the development of this work. Central to
Juran's approach was the message that quality does not happen by accident. It must
be planned for and has three constituent parts: quality planning, quality control and
quality improvement. His approach to the customer was that: '...customers are a
moving target' (Juran, 1989). He expanded upon Deming's work, arguing that the
customer is not simply the external purchaser of a product or service, but that the
internal customer should also be valued. His emphasis upon the customer is
reflected in the nine steps of his 'quality planning road map', shown in the
Appendix.

The substitution of slogans and rhetoric in place of properly planned,

substantial commitment to the principles of quality management were the reasons,
he felt, why so much that was labelled 'quality' had little or no credible impact on
organizations into which it was introduced. The importance of training and
education for all employees was another factor felt by Juran to be critical to the
success of quality management, a factor which on the whole was not approached
with sufficient understanding and commitment by organizations in the West.

Feigenbaum (1991), another of the early American exponents of quality

management, differed from Juran and Deming inasmuch as he spent the greater
proportion of his career actually working in the USA. His main interest was in the
use of statistical methods to improve all aspects of quality control. However, he
emphasized that this could only ever be one element in the overall philosophy that
is quality management. In the 1980s and 1990s he added to his original concepts a
need for there to be a properly constructed approach to human resource
management, as well as giving some importance to attempts to measure customers'
perceptions of quality. It was his interest in linking many different aspects of
quality management that caused Feigenbaum to be identified as one of the earliest
proponents of Total Quality Management. It is interesting to note that he was also
vociferous in arguing that the 'costs' of qualityshould be seen as an integral part of
any definition and approach to the subject. The ten benchmarks identified by
Feigenbaum as being critical to the success of quality management in the 1990s are
shown in the Appendix.
 Philip Crosby completes the grouping of what might be termed the
'classical' philosophers responsible for developing the bedrock of current quality
management thinking and practice. His influence upon the more evangelical
proponents of the subject, such as Tom Peters and Robert Waterman Jr., has been
immense. Crosby's guiding principle is that of the importance of organizations in
striving towards 'zero defects'. Whilst recognizing that any process that involves a
human being can never completely avoid mistakes, a margin for error which sends
out the message that errors and waste are expected should never be built into any
system. Much of his work also forcefully puts across the point that failures
attributed to quality problems and difficulties are almost always attributable to
poor management and that the only way of rectifying them is ultimately to improve
the management skills contained within an organization (Crosby, 1979). Crosby is
interested in the degree to which conformance or non-conformance takes place, the
importance of which is outlined in his 14 steps for quality, shown in the Appendix.

The concept of conformance and non-conformance is an important one in

any consideration of quality management and is an amalgam of the work and
influence of Deming, Juran and Crosby, with the latter having had perhaps the
greatest influence in popularizing the theory. The costs associated with ensuring
conformance and rectifying non-conformance are offered by Crosby as being the
primary reason for organizations in all sectors to consider their systems and
procedures within a quality framework (Crosby, 1979). Within the public sector.
Peacock (1995) identifies the difficulty of assigning a 'cost' to non-conformance as
being a significant barrier to the widespread adoption of this approach. Drawing on
some of the anecdotal evidence offered, he cites the example of a hospital trust that
attempted to calculate the 'costs' of a failure to meet specified criteria for the
testing of blood in a cardiology unit where the significant research input accrued
considerable costs. He arrived at conclusions rejected by the medical staff. Some
public library authorities, including Clwyd and Wiltshire, have undertaken
investigations of non-conformances in specified areas such as requested materials,
with a view to improving service to the end user, rather than assigning a specific
'cost' to instances of failure.

Peters and Waterman, writing in the 1990s, acknowledge that their

original view of quality management has moved forward. Leadership and the need
for organizations to be flexible form the basis of their later works. Peters,
reviewing his earlier works, now promotes the concept of 'liberation' management,
recognizing that there will be times when organizations will need to look beyond
the needs of the customer (Peters, 1992). Middle management, in the culture of
empowerment and greater employee involvement, is, he claims, effectively 'dead'.
It remains to be seen if this will be true in the somewhat different circumstances of
the 1990s. Peters' 12 attributes of 'quality revolution* are outlined in the Appendix.

Another emerging view in the continuing debate on and evolution of quality

management is that of Oren Harari (1993). His work, and that of other academics
in the USA and Europe, has questioned whether the widespread adoption of TQM
has achieved any significant or even tangible improvements in quality,
productivity, competitiveness or financial returns. Managers, he asserts, are
beginning to realize that TQM is not necessarily synonymous with the successful
adoption and practice of quality management. Whilst the latter is essential for
organizational success and competitive advantage, TQM is only one of many
possible means to attain quality.

David Freemantle (1993), a leading consultant in the area of quality

management who advises and practises in a wide range of sectors in the UK,
argues forcefully that customer focus remains a neglected area for many
practitioners of quality. They concentrate too much on the internal processes to the
virtual exclusion of an examination of the interaction between the customer and the
organization. He states:

Customer service is the final test. You can get everything else right...but
unless you complete the process with incredibly good customer service you run the
risk of losing business or even going out of business.

Quality management today

The quality programmes of today can be seen as a response to the current

business and technological ethos. The emphasis is on cost-cutting, national and
global competition, value for money, and increased use of IT to speed up supply
chains and process complex data. The needs and wants of the customer are
paramount in the race to retain and increasemarket share. Quality management
practices represent a radical shift of focus away from the organization and its
needs, and towards consumers (of goods and services), and their needs. The
mechanistic view of the workplaceas typified by Taylorism and Fordism, with its
emphasis on inspection and work study has been superseded by a more organic and
holistic approach. This is concomitant with the decline of manufacturing based
industry and the rise of service industry. Management approaches now
acknowledge the importance of the human interface, recognizing employees as
autonomous, self-motivated individuals, who are capable of making decisions and
influencing the success of the company. The philosophy of quality management is
therefore based on what are accepted as sound management principles, and most
organizations recognize that putting it into practice can, and should, be beneficial
in terms of stakeholder satisfaction, increased effectiveness and success against
competitors.
 The volume of literature on TQM has grown steadily since about 1988
(Brockman, 1992), which has led to increased awareness of, and interest in, the
issues which surround quality methodologies. However, as Line (1995) has noted,
there is a tendency to 'work to death' these 'new' concepts, although he
acknowledges that TQM is a large topic which warrants extensive treatment.
Perhaps the saturation coverage of management topics such as TQM, and the
tendency of some proponents to take an evangelical stance towards one particular
methodology, has resulted in increasing management resistance to the
implementation of quality practices. When resources are tight is it not more
sensible to do nothing, rather than adopt an approach which might be both costly
and ineffective, and where there is no consensus on what constitutes a right
approach? Once again Line (1995), whilst ostensibly dealing with the quality of the
literature on TQM, accurately pinpoints the reason for the gap between the practice
of TQM, and the interest professed in it:

The spirit behind TQM may be admirable, but it soon gets reduced to a set
of techniques, prescriptions and formulae: the spirit is lost in the letter (a great
many letters).

The trend, so far, has been for theory to proliferate, whilst practice lags
behind. There is much talk, but action seems to be confined to large companies in
the with profit sector the obvious examples being Marks & Spencer and
Sainsbury's, where quality levels have been sustained over long periods. There is
also widespread use of quality systems such as BS5750 (now BS EN ISO 9000:
1994). In the UK over 20,000 firmshave attained the standard (British Standards
Institution, 1995). However, a report of 1992 states that many UK organizations
were having problems with TQM implementation, and that the task was not an
easy one (Cruise O'Brien and Voss, 1992). Another report, appearing in the same
year, suggests that 80 per cent of TQM programmes fail (Kearney, 1992).

Benchmarking, as part of this quality thrust, has been found to be widely

used in top companies in the commercial sector (Coopers & Lybrand, 1994;
Coopers & Lybrand/CBI, 1993), and more recently its use has extended to the
public sector, in particular to the National Health Service (NHS), where the work
of the NHS Benchmarking Reference Centre has been influential (Bullivant, 1994).
Benchmarking clubs and organizations are being established, and they seem to
offer a practical way into the benchmarking process. One example is the
Benchmarking Centre in Hemel Hempstead which, according to an article in
August 1994, had 40 member companiesincluding SmithKline Beecham, TSB,
IBM and ICL (Houlder, 1994). In the library and information sector there is
increasing interest in benchmarking techniques, and an acknowledgement that
much can be learnt from other organizations. In the public library sector four
library authorities are embarking on a benchmarking project to compare their
enquiry services (Library Association Record, 1995). The outcomes of this
exercise will be of interest to all LIS managers, irrespective of sector.