Total Quality Management as Information Infrastructure

1
Total Quality Management as Information
Infrastructure

• Upgrade Presentation
• Petter Øgland, 21.06.07

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Empirical observation

• TQM is difficult to manage, as TQM often consists
  of many interrelated and unpredictable
  control/improvement activities

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Proposition

• What if we designed the TQM system to manage
  itself?

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Conceptual framework (1)

• ANT for understanding the politics of TQM design
• Clark Fincham (2003)
• CAS as prescriptive theory for TQM bootstrap
  algorithm
• Kelly (1994) Dooley et al (1995)
• Holland (1995) Wheately (1999)
• Axelrod Cohen (2000)

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Conceptual framework (2)

• II tries to bridge ANT and CAS (Ciborra et al,
  2000 Braa et al, 2007)
• II has proved particularly useful for formulating
  ideas about action research (Braa et al, 2004)
• Action research and TQM (improvement) can be seen
  as the same thing (Checkland Holwell, 1998
  Beckford, 2002)

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Research question

• How to design TQM as II?
• Of particular interest How to succeed with TQM
  when TQM success criteria are not present in the
  organisation.

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Data collection

• Interviews with TQM practitioners on what systems
  they have and how they work
• I present a method for doing TQM as II, that has
  been in use for approx 10 years
• TQM system as an action research, focusing on
  self-improvement
• Academic networks viewed as part of the system
  design
• Compare TQM as II with insights from interviews
  and literature

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Data analysis

• Strengths and weaknesses of the TQM as II
  design
• Acceptance of standards in organisations
• TQM practitioner needs to operate both as
  engineer, scientist and politician

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Contribution to TQM / II theory

• Contributions to the bootstrapping algorithm in
  II theory as applied to TQM
• Paper 1 The importance of building feedback
  loops into the design. Presence of researchers
  generates Hawthorne effect and improvement
  becomes automatic (IRIS, 2006)
• Paper 2 Research questions should be formulated
  as self-reflective to make sure they aid to the
  problem of improving the improvers (IRIS, 2007)
• Paper 3 When TQM success criteria are not
  present, they can often be socially constructed
  (as an illusion) and still make TQM work (UKSS,
  Oxford, 2007)