Bargaining for quality: Quality clauses in enterprise – agreements in Queensland
| Date | 01 August 1998 |
| Published date | 01 August 1998 |
| Pages | 333-349 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459810232806 |
| Author | Arthur P. Preston,Richard B. Sappey,Stephen Teo |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Bargaining for
quality
333
Employee Relations,
Vol. 20 No. 4, 1998, pp. 333-348.
MCB University Press,
0142-5455
Bargaining for quality
Quality clauses in enterprise ±
agreements in Queensland
Arthur P. Preston
Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia
Richard B. Sappey
School of Industrial Relations, Griffith University, Australia, and
Stephen Teo
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Introduction
Although total quality management (TQM) and enterprise bargaining (EB)
are relatively recent trends in Australia there is an emergent literature
about them and a developing relationship between them. To the extent that
they are largely separate is due to the practice by some managers of
avoiding the traditional industrial relations institutions over matters they
regard as managerial prerogative. However, other managers and unions
continue to utilise the traditional industrial relations institutions as one
vehicle for improving performance, including quality approaches, and for
the consequent distribution of wages, working conditions and other
benefits to employees. Philosophically and in their evolution the
approaches of TQM and EB are distinctly different. It is interesting,
therefore, to explore the use of EB to promote TQM, that is through an
institutional mechanism which assumes that the interests of managers and
workers will be a mixture of co-operation and different interests.
TQM
TQM has evolved as a management approach over the last 50 years or so.
Principal proponents such as Deming (1982) and Juran (1989) focused
attention on the measurement of variation to minimise waste. Much of the
philosophy of Deming's position is incorporated in the ``Deming chain''
model which is based on the idea that if an organisation delivers good
quality then customers will come back and the organisation will be
profitable. Deming also produced his now famous 14 points for quality.
Among these were points that bear quite directly on work practices. For
example, ``drive out fear'' is essentially about handing responsibility to
employees so that they can contribute to improvement through task
calculated experiments.
#Arthur P. Preston, Richard B. Sappey and Stephen Teo.
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Relations
20,4
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Hill and Wilkinso n (1995, p . 9) argue that TQM is seen as holistic,
incorporating the fundamental principles of customer o rientation, process
orientation and continu ous impr ovemen t. Initially the fo cus of qua lity
practice was on manufacturing org anisat ions but m ore rece ntly the
principles of quality have been adapted and applied to the serv ice sector
(e.g. Zeithaml et al., 1990). Various autho rs have ch ampion ed quali ty with
different emphases. For example , with the c atch-c ry of ``Quality is free'',
Crosby (1979) argued against the entrenched notion that the delive ry of
higher quality goods and services costs more than lower quality ones.
Crosby also advocated the notion of ` `zero de fects''. Preva iling at titude s in
manufacturing were to maximise production at the e xpense o f quality.
Crosby's point was that unn ecessa ry production caused by fau lts was
waste and thus a cost .
While there is a cont inuing e mphasis on statistical techniques and
technical performance indicat ors, TQM h as moved f rom quality control to
embrace quality which includes the development of employee involvement
(Wilkinson et al., 1992). Despite disquiet and not without q ualification,
TQM is viewed as havi ng the pot ential t o produc e improv ed perfo rmance
through participation i n the UK (Hill, 1991) , and Australia (Da wson and
Palmer, 1993)
There has also developed a debate as to the use of TQM to control
employee behaviour (Kelly, 1995; Wilkinson, et a l, 1997) . The adop tion of
TQM in the ory and pr actice d oes not unambiguously generate increased
consultative and/or par ticipa tive decision- making o pportu nities for
employees. Moreover, em ployees may have t o bear costs such as
surveillance and effort intensi ficati on which are at odds with techn iques
which are designed to be, or become over time, part of systems to imp rove
product or service quali ty (Hill and Wilkinson, 1995). Also, Nettle 's (1995 )
discussion of the history of the qual ity move ment ind icates t hat ther e have
been divisions within managerial groups over the development of
establishing quality as an coherent approach to management, and to
institutionalising it through representative organisations and establishing
standards and accreditation processes.
Saunders and Pres ton (199 4) prese nted a model (henc eforth, the S-P
model) which attempted to d raw toge ther the v arious e mphase s in the
quality literature into a coherent model. This model of TQM now u nderpi ns
part of the evalua tion pro cess ado pted by th e Austra lian Qua lity Awa rds
(AQA, 1997) (Figu re 1). It is p resent ed as indi cative of a framework that
could be regarded as a comprehensive perspective on quality management.
The model sets out fo ur layer s at which q uality may be conceived. The
first three (top three rows in Figure 1) are formative of the achievement of
quality outcomes, and the fourth r ow ident ifies th e outcom es thems elves.
This is con sistent with Dem ing's philosophy that if or ganisa tions look
after the quality of product and service then profits and performance will
look after themse lves. Th e model as sumes fi ve gener ic groups of
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