KVALITA INOVÁCIA PROSPERITA III/1-2 1999 (24-34)

 

TQM IN HIGHER EDUCATION: AN EUROPEAN MODEL

TQM VO VYSOKOŠKOLSKOM VZDELÁVANÍ: EURÓPSKY MODEL

TAUNO KEKÄLE

 

  1. THE PROBLEMS WITH ONE TQM FOR MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF HIGHER EDUCATION
  2. TQM has been embraced by many different types of organisations, yet despite the genuine efforts many organisations still experience the difficulties that pestered them before TQM initiation. This problem seems to stem from the nature of TQM itself: while the philosophy of TQM can be described as ”a philosophy that seeks to improve the results of an organisation’s management system, guarantee its long-term survival through a consistent focus on improving customer satisfaction and meet the needs of all of it’s stakeholders” (Dobbins 1995), the organisations most often must implement a method. The described failures are mostly failures of a certain method within a certain environment. Many different strategies, tactics, tools and methods are used under the concept of TQM (see Pegels 1994). Quality control, statistical methods and ISO 9000 standards are just some of the tools for achieving TQM that are typically used in industries. It can also be argued, that achieving total quality is a question of developing the core competencies of the business; it depends on the organisation, its culture and the type of business or field it's in, what these competencies are seen to be. Even if "customer satisfaction" would be seen as the ultimate objective for TQM, the words "customer" and "satisfaction" are defined in broadly differing ways depending on which type of activity takes place within the organisation.

    Typically, anybody implementing TQM principles in higher education faces these problems. The question of ”who is our customer” may be even more difficult to answer than in other types of organisations: students receive the teaching, but the tax-payers are paying for it, and the society, say, of year 2010 is getting advantage of it (Saarinen 1996). Another specific problem of higher education is the polarities of the culture (that more or less prevail in all service organisations; see Armistead 1985): there are often, on the one hand, administrators that have their agreed procedures and rules and, on the other hand, teaching and research staff with a proposed integrity of academic freedom (Brennan 1997). Even professional cultures affect the choices: e.g. engineering schools may accept industry-derived approaches much easier than colleges of liberal arts (Kekäle 1994; Walker 1995). What all this means is that the TQM approaches in higher education, to an even higher degree than in many other types of organisations, must be carefully tailored to the specific needs of the target organisation.

    Wilkinson et al. (1992) quote the ingredients of three alternative views to total quality management, suggested by British Quality Association as seen in the everyday practice of British companies. In the first of them, TQM can be seen focusing on the "soft" qualitative characters, leading to open management styles, delegated responsibility and increased staff autonomy. The second type places emphasis on the production aspects such as systematic measurement and control of work, setting standards of performance and using statistical procedures; this view arguably leads to less discretion for employees. The third view is a mixture of these "hard" and "soft" features: key ingredients are "an obsession with quality, the need for scientific approach; and the view that all employees are part of the one team " (Wilkinson et al. 1992; see table 1). The theoretically correct approach to TQM should be an integrated effort that covers all aspects for gaining competitive advantage and general well-being by continuously improving every facet of the organisational culture (see e.g. Tobin 1990; Ho 1996; EFQM 1997) However, as the results of Baldrige Award winning companies and also many higher-education change projects (Brennan 1997) would suggest, a "total" all-at-once approach as a practical way to implement TQM is out of scope for the most companies' resources and abilities. The development must be started from somewhere and built up in an incremental way.

     

     

    To our opinion, it makes sense to start from one edge of the TQM concept and work your way through successes to a broader approach (figure 1); some organisations never even imagine to try to cover the whole spectrum. The logical ways would be either from the ”hard” methods via the mixed ones gradually to the softer ones, or vice versa; or, if the organisation feels the ”mixed” types are the ones that meet the broadest acceptance, then that type of approach can be implemented first and gradually take into use both standards and empowerment approaches. These choices of approaches must be based on a view, an understanding of the culture of the own organisation, which can be difficult to gain from within - an outsider’s help may be needed.

     

     

  3. A CULTURE MATCH MODEL: WHICH APPROACHES MAY WORK AND WHERE ?
  4. There are numerous research papers where organisational culture is seen to be one of the major causes of failure in a TQM program (e.g. van Donk and Sanders 1993; Van Allen 1994; Sinclair and Collins 1994; Horine and Hailey 1995; Mann and Kehoe 1995). Very seldom are the causal mechanisms behind the problems addressed or culturally correct TQM methods suggested, however. It is thus of importance to take a closer look to organisational cultures and their effects to TQM. We are in our research relying to Schein's (1985) view to organisational cultures, where culture of an organisation is seen to consist of three levels: 1) artifacts and creations, that are visible but not often decipherable, 2) values, and 3) basic assumptions, that operate unconsciously. Artefacts are "the constructed physical and social level of the culture's environment", e.g. language, technological output, artistic production, physical space or the behaviour of the group. Values are the organization's "sense of what ought to be, as distinct from what is" and reflect what is seen to be "good" or "correct", (Putnam 1983) in different situations of choice. Even if artefacts and values are the levels typically approached by the researchers, Schein (1986) states that "the term 'culture' should

     

     

    be reserved for the deeper level of basic assumptions and beliefs that are shared by members of an organisation, that operate subconsciously, and that define in a 'taken-for-the granted' fashion an organization's view of itself and it's environment."

    This approach to the organisational culture allows us to try to understand "why organisations do some of the things they do and why leaders have some of the difficulties they have" (Schein 1986) instead of just describing the differences in artefacts and values as some other research directions do. Typical assumptions may include the ultimate basis for human relationships (hierarchy, tradition, group welfare or individual welfare) but also the basic assumptions for structuring organisational relationships. The theoretical background to the model used in evaluating the cases presented here is the notion that all TQM approaches are, similarly, artefacts that are based on some sets of assumptions. That means, that the workers may not resist change: they may resist the specific type of change that seems to bring in the wrong type of underlying cultural values and assumptions (Kekäle 1997). This may result in responses such as ”(the) whole approach continues to be seen by many as something that may work for the janitorial and housing staffs but the academic applications are limited- the professors just don't buy it" (Seymour 1993).

    On the basis of 1) the organisational typologies presented above, 2) the BQA typology of different TQM approaches, and 3) Schein's idea of basic cultural assumptions being the central cultural contents (behind more obvious ones like the artefacts), we have presented a model on how differences in organisational culture might affect the success or failure of quality work in an organisation (Kekäle and Kekäle 1995; Kekäle 1996; Kekäle 1997; see Figure 2). The main idea is that the approaches that contain similar values and background assumptions that prevail in the organisation they are to be implemented in will probably meet the least resistance and thus might be the best starting point for an incremental TQM implementation. The whole university would, in this case, have a loose ”umbrella” quality system on a very general level (vision, policies, strategies, a minimum of standardised procedures for processes that are common for the whole University such as student data management, reporting guidelines for the faculties and departments etc). Below this central system, the different subunits could be allowed to have different systems and approaches that suit their way of working, either structured (based on ISO 9001 or similar) or based on self-evaluation and improvement plans.

     

     

  5. TWO CASE STUDIES OF TQM IMPLEMENTATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION
  6. Case 1. The Nursing School

    The first organisation we have been working on is within a School of Nursing and Midwifery and part of a University. Only the School has opted for ISO 9001 as a vehicle for quality improvement. The University as a whole has so far refrained from becoming embroiled in the pursuit of a certification on the basis that it is using the School as the pilot study.

    The School decided to follow the route for ISO 9001 registration (which was received three weeks before the completion of this article) due to the conditions under which many of the staff already worked and the history of the organisation. Nursing and midwifery professional practice and education in the UK is driven by many rules and regulations much the same as any country in the world. The School of nursing evolved around that ethos and as a result the culture here is one that is procedurally driven; in other words, it is in the culture to follow procedures. Having said that, the base of the University is for academic freedom and whichever route was chosen would have to be one that was not felt too restrictive by the staff, would allow for professional opinion, be proactive and act on common sense.

    The staff was surveyed initially, asking them for their views on the current procedures and the way in which they wanted to see quality developing. Although the basic rule has always been about the quality of teaching (something which is assessed by the UK higher education quality agency every five years), it was the additional comments that made the unit take the ISO 9001 route. These comments were related to the amount of time spent finding information, discovering who was responsible for what, or what happens when, and suggested that the administrative systems supporting the lecturers was inadequate.

    That was the area that was to be addressed first. It was felt that many of the issues raised in the comments could in effect be cancelled out by reviewing working practices, developing/reviewing procedures and generally making things easier to understand, communicating items to everyone, involving everyone in procedures and stating things clearly. That decision led the School to ISO 9001 as a way to recognise this effort and two years and countless reviews later the majority of the issues has been addressed.

    The underlying message to academic staff was to help the administrators to improve the systems. As a result, the systems would help them spend less time on administrative tasks and more time teaching and with students. In a sense, the lecturers had to help business and administration to help themselves, and this idea was not popular at first. However, instead of trying to involve everyone at once, it was decided to start in a small area and evaluate working practices and the associated procedures. A thorough audit was carried out in the pilot areas. The team came up with recommendations for change and then circulated them to other, similar areas to see if there was value in doing the same elsewhere. This approach then naturally formed groups of academic and admin staff interested in the same area. The only agreement was that if they decided to adopt the new working practices they had to document it clearly and concisely. New practices and procedures were then presented to the Quality Committee for final approval. The two processes thus went hand-in-hand, a team effort and yet developing a standard path. The original working groups then carried out their own evaluation of the improvements that had taken place and reported back good practice which is disseminated through the Quality Committee. Performance indicators were set wherever applicable and appropriate and these are reviewed a regular intervals by the team.

    In essence, the existing practices/procedures were evaluated and staff given the authority to change them if they could prove the benefits. One area that the teams have not involved themselves with though is how lecturers prepare for teaching sessions. Some teams have looked at alternative methods and supporting evidence instead, such as a peer review mechanism, formal assessment of teaching quality, student feedback on lecturer performance for an individual session and student feedback for the course. What the lecturers do with the students is basically up to them, as long as they cover all the elements of the course curriculum and the evaluations do not provide negative or contradictory information of their performance.

     

    Case 2. The Continuing Education Unit

    The second case organisation is a university-based unit arranging management training programmes, open university courses and retraining programmes for the unemployed. All courses are sold to paying customers, and the people working in this unit (project managers and secretaries) practically are 20 small one-person units working in very close co-operation with their respective customers and the academics in their respective fields. Responsibility problems, like those in the previous case, were non-existent, because of the fact that nearly everybody had their own projects. Some of the fields of work, like quality training for engineers and companies, were more knowledgeable of quality thinking, whereas some others had but a vague idea, generated by information about the self-evaluation carried out at the University, of what quality at the university level might include.

    When we entered the second case organisation, the management was working on a quality manual, a handbook on a very high policy/principles level that would tell the project managers what quality and customers were thought to be in that business, which procedures at least should be followed and what documentation should be carried out. The teaching contents, as in the previous case, were not dictated in the manual. It was the sole responsibility of the project managers to plan and man the training programmes; either they wanted to teach themselves or hire the teachers from the university or even outside, it was OK as long as the economic aspects were considered and the participants agreed that they got what they paid for.

    The manual was received with little enthusiasm, although everybody had said it could be good to have one to standardise the ways of working while it was being written. The manager had composed most of the manual by himself together with one of the project managers, and the manual reflected their ways of working, which was one of the reasons it wasn't generally even read through when it was published. The other reason, we think, and our discussions with the project managers (and an unpublished survey done later in this organisation) seem to confirm this, was that every project manager had developed his or her own way to do things- their personal work culture - that they were very proud of and they were not going to accept a "compromise" as a standard was seen to be. Everybody had already a ”mental version of a procedures manual”, and it was felt a common written one that would mix the individual ones was not needed or worth the while.

    When it was noticed that procedures from above weren't accepted, a quality award- type, loosely structured approach was tried: at the end of each training programme a self-evaluation report, where the measured results were evaluated against the set goals, had to be written (a "customer satisfaction survey" and budgetary evaluation were obligatory components in this report; Kekäle and Takala 1995). Other than the results, the report was to describe what was agreed on, what was done, which kind of problems were encountered, how they were solved (or were being solved for the next programme), which teachers were involved on the programme and how they managed etc. Every manager had the freedom to take up the results they felt were of importance. These reports were then circulated among colleagues and copied for the bosses.

    This practice has now been carried on for three years and, to the opinion of the actors, has worked well, raising general awareness of the multiple facets of quality in management training. Some "start-ups" for systematised procedures have begun to appear. For example, some project managers have written very light procedures charts of what must be done how many weeks before or after the programme started and in how they were performed so maybe the quality systems manual will be there one day after all.

     

     

  7. CONCLUSION
  8. The results presented earlier (Kekäle and Kekäle 1995; Kekäle 1996; Kekäle 1997; Kekäle 1998) as well as these two cases would seem to suggest that best results can be achieved when the road to TQM is started at a point where there's a match between the basic assumptions that act as a base for an organization's culture and the assumptions that are included in the approach; i.e. the least-resistance route. These suggestions should be considered as ideal typical guidelines in Weberian sense, and it is naturally difficult to try to find solid examples of any of the types; in an organisation there is always some features from the other types also present. Higher education organisations applying TQM tools would benefit from an unbiased analysis of the organization's culture, confronted with and weighed towards the analysis of the external situation and the stakeholders’ demands.

    One recommended approach for TQM in higher education, generalizable from the Nursing School case and currently in use in several other units, would be such that 1) the unit as a whole starts from the EFQM model (EFQM 1997), assessing its quality level and building a common strategy and quality vision and revising their system yearly. Then, 2) subunits that are culturally receptive for ISO 9001 type systems build a system that freezes the results at the agreed level and audit the system and results e.g. yearly. Units that don’t immediately accept standardised systems and structured procedures would instead 3) deepen the self-evaluation e.g. by teacher self-evaluation portfolios. In this way, the subunits are seen as subcontractors, some of which should have a auditable quality system and some are accepted without a system, as long as results are good enough.

    In the first case organisation, a culture survey was conducted. Being that the nursing profession is quite heavily regulated by standards and rules, the decision to go for an ISO 9001 certification was not too difficult to take. However, the different cultures among administrative staff and teachers caused the need to take a very participate route to the use of standards, and the approach reminds more that of team-based quality tools, with the certification coming more as a by-product. The resulting certification caters mainly the administrative staff, and the teachers are slowly adjusting their academic freedom philosophy with the quality philosophy via participation in the quality team sessions. This case by itself reflects the model very well; the more bureaucratic subculture of the administrators accepts a rule-based approach of ISO 9001, whereas the participative subculture of the teachers need a team-based - or even individualistic - quality approach.

    In the second case organisation, academic freedom is at its top; the workers have been empowered to the maximum, and to top it all, the management training contents also emphasise people empowerment and employee participation. To bring standardised methods with written work procedures to this type of workers from management was quite clearly deemed to fail. The second attempt was to take the part of the standardised way of working that was most probable not to conflict with the academic freedom culture, written self-evaluation and start a systematic implementation from there. Later, the workers have themselves gradually seen the need to document also the contract reviews and even, to some extent, the procedures. The interest in making up a quality system has risen again after a ”down” period of a couple of years; the experiences with the documentation in the form of written evaluation reports may have changed the views to a systematic approach.

    Case findings in some other higher education units and fields (engineering and teacher training, Kekäle 1998; applied science, sociology, biology and mathematics, Kekäle J. forthcoming) also suggest that e.g. the engineering field might be quite receptive for industry-derived quality systems standards whereas human sciences researchers might accept reflective self-evaluation better. The experiences from these higher education unit seem to confirm the reasoning presented in the model, that it’s impossible to find one correct TQM approach for all types of organisations even within one field (the academic field, in this case). Naturally, there are also differences within the faculties and departments, such as differences in thinking between teachers, researchers and administrators. Organisational history, culture and also the basic philosophy prevailing within the professions or the subjects taught (in these cases ”taking care of people” on the one hand, modern management and business realities on the other hand) may affect the views of the people.

    Thus, it seems to be important to assess or survey the culture and to tailor the approach so that the incremental implementation at the same time as it produces results towards the state of TQM also changes the culture. Every new phase in the strive towards TQM also broadens the possibility of choosing the next step because of the seeds of a new ingredient sown in the culture, those of quality culture.

     

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    ABOUT THE AUTHOR

    Dr. Kekäle works as a Senior assistant at the University of Vaasa, Finland (for more information, see http://www.uwasa.fi/~tke/cv). Correspondence to Tauno Kekäle, University of Vaasa/Production Economics, P.O. Box 700, 65101 Vaasa, Finland or by email tke@uwasa.fi.

     

    ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

    The author wishes to thank Ms. Michelle Williams for her input in the preparation stages of this article.


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