Improving the way Total Systems Interventions are used in Total Quality Management

1. Improving the way Total Systems Interventions are used in Total Quality Management Petter Øgland NEON 2008 Conference, Tromsø, Nov 26th 2008

2. Problem • How to select a design strategy for total quality management (TQM) for achieving optimal payoff in an organization that is not seriously motivated to do TQM?

3. Two perspectives • Brunsson et al (2000): Organizations want to be seen as complying with ISO 9000 and TQM, but the do not want to do what is required • Flood (1993): Critical social theory (Adorno, Habermas, Foucault, …) should be used as a foundation for TQM to liberate and improve social standards while improving business processes

4. Hypothesis • If we look at TQM as knowledge management, then the situation becomes political (relationship: knowledge/power), we can use Flood’s idea, and the TQM implementation process becomes stable

5. Total Systems Intervention (Flood & Jackson, 1991) • Creativity • Use Morgan’s metaphors for describing the organization (problem) • Choice (SOSM) • Viable Systems Methodology (Beer, 1972) • Soft Systems Methodology (Checkland, 1981) • Critical Systems Heuristics (Ulrich, 1983) • … • Implementation

6. CST PSM OR 3rd loop 2nd loop 1st loop Why? What? How? Triple loop learning (Flood & Romm, 1996):2-loop learning (Argyris, 1978) + “might is right”?

7. Real world problem Engineering design Documented specification of solution Formulate Solve Theory Model Decision Implementation Documented evaluation of solution New knowledge Real world solution Monitoring Design of experiment for testing hypotheses:Design science = design QMS & evaluate

8. Case study: • Unit within public sector organization • Approx 20 people (system designers & computer programmers) • Average age = 40, male/female = balanced • Working according to life cycle model • There is a documented QMS • First version of information system established 1998; system is now mature and work is concerned with annual updates and new functionality • Generally seen as one of the better units of the organization (“role model”)

9. Case study: Technical results 0% = Bad Unstructured changes in format (”improvements”) register as decline in documentation quality

10. Evolution of QMS: social perspective • Year 1: Distribution of TQM results sideways and upwards. Emotional stir and frustration. Complaints to head of corporation (saved by QMS owner) • Year 2: Small improvements, people complain that “products are important, not processes” • Year 3: Audits show that not only process is of low quality, but predictions about product development are bad too. • Post-experiment: The methodology is rewritten to achieve better scores without achieving better quality

11. Null hypothesis rejected? Hmmm… SPC-charts for “hypothesis testing” (Shewhart, 1939) H1: stable process H0: unstable process Need to argue qualitatively for rejecting H0

12. Analysis & discussion Create vertical tension by reporting TQM result one level above internal customer Create horizontal tension by benchmarking TQM results Make sure the QMS owner is The winner of the political game of TQM

13. Conclusion • Use of critical theory for implementing TQM makes the process unpredictable (Suchman, 2007) • Three years of data was not sufficient for statistical reasoning, but there were no indications of the TQM implementation process not being stable (it seems to work)