In this paper I will discuss the management and leadership roles and responsibilities in
relation to Total Quality Management.
Within the past two decades, total quality management represents one of the most
profound changes in the way companies are now being managed. According to Biech
(1994), Quality improvement (TQM) is a customer-focused, quality-centered, fact-based,
team driven, senior management-led process to achieve an organizations strategic
imperative through continuous process improvement (pp. 1-2). The benefits associated
with TQM includes higher quality, lower cost products and services that aligns with
customer demands (Zbaracki, 1998). The ability of a company to respond to the needs of
its customers measures the overall success of that company. Many organizations may ask
the question, what is quality? As Hick (1998) explains, quality is meeting or exceeding the
needs and expectations of the customer (p.1). What exactly are the expectations of the
customers? It is now the responsibility of the organization to define those needs. Perhaps
Biech (1994) provides a simpler picture, Quality is the measure of satisfaction that occurs
between a customer and supplier that only they can define. In other words, quality is what
the customer says it is (p.25). Yet according to Perigord (1987), Total quality means that all
participants in a company are involved regardless of their position in the hierarchy (p.7).
Basically making it seem impossible for quality to be successful if all members are not
sharing in the same vision and/or goals.
Dr. W. Edwards Deming is well known for the introduction of the concept involving
