Total Quality Management and employees' involvement: A case study of an Australian organisation

Abstract

Although much has been said about people being the primary resource in an organisation practising Total Quality Management (TQM), this area has been neglected by many companies implementing TQM. This paper presents a detailed case study of an Australian organisation that is recognised as a ‘quality’ company and discusses a number of issues relating to employee involvement. The case study finds that employee involvement was a major focus of the company when TQM was first implemented. However, this was lost when the company became more outward focused. The lack of ongoing employee involvement at the shop-floor level has been identified as a major reason for the non-sustainability of TQM in the organisation.

Keywords:

• Total Quality Management
• employee involvement
• Australia
• case study

Acknowledgement

The authors are grateful to Ms Jasmeen Kaur for providing research assistance in completing this paper.