A review of the eleven articles combined with personal experience lead me to conclude that a move from a "quarterly revenue" to a "total quality" paradigm is nearly impossible without a similar shift in the thinking patterns of upper management. This change from a "quarterly revenue" paradigm to a total quality paradigm can be driven either by "inspiration" or "perspiration" but changes due to "perspiration" seem far more common in the western business world. General Franks' observation that organizations change for three reasons:
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
accurately describes western business culture's attitudes towards total quality. While having an "inspirational" paradigm shift of the "heart" may yield more positive results in the long term, a "perspirational" paradigm shift of the mind (most likely triggered from a "fight or flight" response) seems the more typical path for western business. Most businesses seem content to ignore Franks' first point and wait until point two or three to before turning to total quality (if indeed they ever do…).
My first point is that by far and away the majority of the businesses do not turn to total quality until forced to for competitive reasons. The following quotations support this view: "If you are in highly competitive markets TQ is a pre-condition of survival. If you're not you have a choice." (Binney). "When you are laid off for a little over two years in a 4.5 year period, it make you realize that you are doing something wrong. We basically knew we had to try something different." (Zidek). "A team from the International Union of Electrical Workers, worried that defense cutback might cost them their jobs, offered 10 months ago to organize a marketing team to seek new business for the factory." (Grant) These businesses are not "empowering the employees" due to some "higher goal" or inspiration, they are empowering the employees because they have no other choice for survival.
My second point is that a successful TQ effort requires more than training and techniques. Binney hits it on the head when he states:
"Training-led, top-down, company-wide add-ons to existing jobs simply do not work. In fact such TQ programs can be counterproductive in 'inoculating' organizations against real change."
Total Quality ethic works against competitiveness
And "that a view of it as a package of techniques, realizable on the basis of a mystique of commitment is a non-starter." Ginnodo adds:
"TQM is at least 80% concept and probably only 20% tools and techniques. It’s far more important to deal with leadership, training and empowerment - the conceptual issues that will get people in sync with the effort."
TQM: A child takes a first few faltering steps
My third point is that an "inspirational" approach to TQ requires an almost religious/spiritual basis. The inspirational approach requires valuing human resources and quality more highly than bottom line profits. This is an example of Max Weber's "wertrational" or value-focused thinking rather than the "zweckational" or technocratic thinking than has overcome western society. Technocratic thinking supposes that the highest purpose an organization can achieve is the maximum bottom-line dollars and cents profit without considering anything else. To work against this paradigm requires an almost religious belief that "people are more important than money." This belief is heresy within the prevailing "quarterly revenue" culture.
Finally, my fourth point is that "holistic" versus "analytic" argument advanced by Yoshida is extremely insightful. It ties well with the top-down versus bottom-up discussion we had in previous readings. The concepts of "system thinking" are relatively new to American business. Eli Goldratt's work in the Theory of Constraints was iconoclastic when it claimed that optimizing all the parts of a system did not lead to an optimal overall system. This is antithetical to the deeply held western/capitalist belief that the group as a whole is best served by the individuals each pursuing their own enlightened self-interests.
The "holistic" versus "analytic" viewpoint can also be used to illustrate a violent time in US history. During the Vietnam war, the US had an extreme superiority in traditional military strength and probably the best intelligence/analytical capabilities in the world. However, by viewing the war from a strictly "analytic" viewpoint, the US was unable to see (hence effectively address) the native, national, and international forces that would eventually cause a "defeat" despite the overwhelming "analytic" superiority.