Improving the way Total Systems Interventions are used in Total

Quality Management

Petter Øgland

NEON 2008 Conference, Tromsø, Nov 26th 2008

Problem

• How to select a design strategy for total quality management (TQM) for achieving optimal payoff in an organization that is not seriously motivated to do TQM?

Two perspectives

• Brunsson et al (2000): Organizations want to be seen as complying with ISO 9000 and TQM, but the do not want to do what is required

• Flood (1993): Critical social theory (Adorno, Habermas, Foucault, …) should be used as a foundation for TQM to liberate and improve social standards while improving business processes

Hypothesis

• If we look at TQM as knowledge management, then the situation becomes political (relationship: knowledge/power), we can use Flood’s idea, and the TQM implementation process becomes stable

Total Systems Intervention (Flood & Jackson, 1991)

• Creativity– Use Morgan’s metaphors for describing the

organization (problem)

• Choice (SOSM)– Viable Systems Methodology (Beer, 1972)– Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 1981)– Critical Systems Heuristics (Ulrich, 1983)– …

• Implementation

Triple loop learning (Flood & Romm, 1996):

2-loop learning (Argyris, 1978) + “might is right”?

1st loop2nd loop3rd loop

How?What?Why?

CST PSM OR

Design of experiment for testing hypotheses:

Design science = design QMS & evaluate

Real world problem Documented specification of solution

Real world solutionDocumented evaluation of solution

TheoryModel

Engineering design

ImplementationDecision

Formulate Solve

New knowledge

Monitoring

Case study:

• Unit within public sector organization– Approx 20 people (system designers & computer

programmers)– Average age = 40, male/female = balanced– Working according to life cycle model– There is a documented QMS– First version of information system established 1998;

system is now mature and work is concerned with annual updates and new functionality

• Generally seen as one of the better units of the organization (“role model”)

Case study: Technical results

0 20 40 60 80 100

Implementation&

documentation

Testing

Quality plans

Assessmentsand riskanalysis

Analysis &design

Updatingrequirements

Quality index - phase by phase (sorted)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

Annual assessm ent report

0% = Bad

Unstructured changes in format (”improvements”)register as decline in documentation quality

Evolution of QMS: social perspective

• Year 1: Distribution of TQM results sideways and upwards. Emotional stir and frustration. Complaints to head of corporation (saved by QMS owner)

• Year 2: Small improvements, people complain that “products are important, not processes”

• Year 3: Audits show that not only process is of low quality, but predictions about product development are bad too.

• Post-experiment: The methodology is rewritten to achieve better scores without achieving better quality

Null hypothesis rejected? Hmmm…

0

10

20

30

40

50

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

Total quality index

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

Impr. rate AVG = 1,4UCL = 5,7 LCL = -2,8

SPC-charts for “hypothesis testing” (Shewhart, 1939)H1: stable processH0: unstable processNeed to argue qualitatively for rejecting H0

Analysis & discussion

Create horizontal tension by benchmarking TQM results

Create vertical tension by reportingTQM result one level above internalcustomer

Make sure the QMS owner isThe winner of the political gameof TQM

Conclusion

• Use of critical theory for implementing TQM makes the process unpredictable (Suchman, 2007)

• Three years of data was not sufficient for statistical reasoning, but there were no indications of the TQM implementation process not being stable (it seems to work)