Never the Twain Shall Meet: TQM versus the Citizen's Charter
| Author | Robert H Haigh,David S Morris |
| DOI | 10.1177/014473949501500104 |
| Published date | 01 March 1995 |
| Date | 01 March 1995 |
Teaching Public Administration: Spring, 1995,
Vol.
xv,
No.1,
pp
43-61
Never the Twain Shall Meet:
TQM versus the Citizen's
Charter
DAVID S MORRIS and ROBERT H HAIGH
Sheffield Business School
All approaches
to
management, from Taylorism through to the latest writings
of
such
popularists as Tom Peters, can be said
to
have a more or less clearly discernible
philosophical basis. This can be seen most readily in the writings
of
theorists from
various schools
of
management thinking with regard to the vexed question
of
employee
motivation, where each
of
the schools has produced its own assumptions, policies and
expectations
of
management action. (Stoner, 1975)
Philosophies vary in the extent to which they seek to explain social, economic and
political reality. Similady, they differ with regard to the manner in which they are
integrated i.e. in the extent to which they are all-encompassing. For instance,
if
a
philosophical continuum were to be produced, then traditional Conservatism would be
placed toward one end
of
the continuum whilst Marxism, a more weltanschauung
philosophical formulation, would be positioned toward the opposite end
of
the same
continuum. Yet all philosophies possess certain common characteristics and it is on
the basis
of
this commonality that the present analysis focuses.
These similarities may be reduced to four elements:
* a challenge to the status quo: a critique
of
the past and
of
the present;
* a set
of
values;
* a vehicle for change: which facilitates the movement from the status quo;
* a future desired state.
Such a schema facilitates both an analysis
of
an individual philosophy and a
comparison between differing philosophies. It is in this latter capacity that the schema
will be used.
When applied to Total Quality Management, the schema reveals the emergence
of
the
following scenario:
43
Teaching Public Administration
1.
A challenge to the status quo: Konosuke Matsushita adequately summarised
the more radical challenge to the managerial status quo existing in Europe and North
America when he stated that:
"We
are going to win and the industrial West
is
going to lose out: there's
nothing you can
do
about it because the reasons for your failure are within
yourselves.
Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads, with
the bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers. You're
convinced, deep down, that this
is
the right way to run a business.
For you, the essence
of
management
is
getting the ideas out
of
the heads
ofthe
bosses and into the hands
of
labour.
We
are beyond the Taylor model: business,
we
know,
is
now so complex and
difficult, the survival
of
firms so hazardous in an environment increasingly
unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued
existence depends upon the day-to-day mobilisation
of
every ounce
of
intelligence.
For us, the core
of
management
is
precisely the art
of
mobilising and pulling
together the intellectual resources
of
all employees in the service
of
the firm.
Only by drawing on the combined brainpower
of
all
of
its employees can a firm
face
up
to the turbulence and constraints
of
today's environment.
This
is
why our large companies give their employees three to four times more
training than yours. This
is
why they foster, within the firm, such intensive
exchange and communication. This
is
why they seek, constantly, everybody's
suggestions and why they demand from the educational system increasing
numbers
of
graduates
as
well as bright and well-educated generalists: these
people are the lifeblood
of
industry.
Your socially minded bosses, often
full
of
good intentions, believe their duty
is
to protect the people
in
their firms.
We,
on the other hand, are realists and consider it our duty to get people to
defend their firms which will pay them back a hundredfold for their dedication.
By
doing this,
we
end
up
by being more social than you." (Matsushita, 1989)
The radical critique which Matsushita offers
of
management practice
in
the Western
manufacturing sector; has equal applicability to the Western service sector
in
general,
and to the British public sector
in
particular. After all, it was Deming himself who
observed that service workers have a product: namely, service!
44
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