Selected papers from the QMOD Conference

The papers in this special issue have been selected from the 10th International QMOD (Quality Management and Organisational Development)conference. The QMOD conferences have previously been held in China (1997),Slovenia (1999), Denmark (2000), Sweden (2001), Korea (2002), France (2003),Mexico (2004), Italy (2005), and England (2006). The 10th Jubilee QMOD Conference was organised by Linköping and Lund Universities during 18-20 June, 2007 at Lund University, Campus Helsingborg, Sweden, strongly supported by Helsingborg city. Under the main theme of “Our dreams of excellence– learning from the past and architecturing the future”,approximately 250 delegates from 39 countries participated and nearly 200 highly qualified scientific research papers were presented during the conference. Selected best papers have already been published in various QMOD supporting journals and this special issue is the third special publication composed of selected best papers from the 10th QMOD (www.ch.lu.se/qmod).

One of the common characteristics of the selected papers is that the authors either re-examine the existing quality frameworks or try to explore new roads for the future development of quality frameworks. While some authors argue on the importance of focusing on basic and fundamental issues of quality management such as process orientation (Hellström and Eriksson, 2008)and customer focus (Klefsjö et al., 2008),others see alternative issues as too much focus on traditional quality attributes, such as quality assurance and reliability, can at the same time be a hindrance for focusing on speediness in launching new products and thereby reduce companies’ competitiveness (Cole and Matsumiya, 2008). What can we say about these seemingly contradictory arguments? Back to basics or looking forward? Can a focus on quality be too much or too little of a good thing? The selected papers will give some thoughts and ideas on these critical questions and make us reflect on the evolution of the quality and excellence movement (Dahlgaard-Park, 2006, 2007; Dahlgaard-Park and Dahlgaard, 2007).

In the paper by Dahlgaard-Park (2008) the EFQM Excellence Model is benchmarked with one of the core areas of organizational theory –management control. The aim of this comparison (benchmarking) is to find out if the EFQM excellence model can be regarded as a management control model and to identify if there are inconsistencies in the way the enabler criterions have been defined.

Inconsistencies are identified if one school of thought dominates one of the enablers, for example the leadership criterion, and another school of thought is dominating another enabler, for example Processes. One of the inconsistencies identified is that the humanistic school of thought is dominating the leadership and people criterions and the cybernetic school of thought seems to dominate the processes criterion even if the processes are filled with people trying to produce and deliver products and services of excellent standards to the customers. Such kind of inconsistencies may be a potential barrier for people’s understanding and acceptance when companies are trying to implement TQM and trying to attain excellence. The reason for such inconsistencies may be that people behind the EFQM model – the people who have agreed on the definitions of each criterion and sub-criterion – could not agree on what they have been talking about and hence they had to come up with a compromise or a consensus.

In spite of the identified inconsistencies, it is the author’s finding that the EFQM model is one of the best existing management control models. The model is flexible enough to include or adapt to most of the new quality management areas which have come up since the model was launched in 1991 such as innovation, lean production, six sigma quality, networking, and ethics etc. Some of these new areas have been included in this special edition, and it is up to the readers to conclude if these new areas should be included or not under the umbrella of TQM and excellence.

The discussions are taken up by Klefsjö et al. (2008) where they review the current development of quality management and reflect whether there are broad agreements on the various concepts used within the framework of quality management. Furthermore they try to identify some of new tendencies in light of quality evolution and in this context they ask a critical and important question on whether the current direction of development is beneficial or not. What I find interesting here is one of their conclusions that the development of various quality concepts largely has taken place without deep consideration of what quality management is or should be. In other words they point out that there is a lack of self awareness or self consciousness within the quality community (here I mean quality professionals both theorists as well as practitioners) and hence the development is taking place without any“master plan”. Due to this one of the negative consequences according to the authors is that those many new adopted concepts and issues among others,organizational and global sustainability, human rights, financial stability,environmental protection, etc. may create confusions and troubles. These expanded focus areas may cause loss of the original focus on customer satisfaction and quality.

While Klefsjö, Bergquist and Garvare argue about the importance of“back to the basics” Cole and Matsumiya (2008)argue that an excessive focus on quality improvements can inhibit innovation. Successive process improvements (kaizen), build on repetitive and relatively stable processes, play a critical role for success in the automotive industry where technology changes slowly. However industries where technology and market demands are rapidly and radically changing, typically as in the IT sector, the kaizen culture can be an obstacle for innovation.

The authors demonstrate through three case studies in the hi-tech sector,(DRAM industry, Network equipment industry and the system integration market)how a focus on quality (specifically Japanese quality culture emphasizing reliability and durability) have inhibited companies to innovate in response to the radically different market requirements. The heavy focus on these quality parameters made Japanese companies “blind” to other often more appreciated quality attributes in the hi-tech sector such as speed and to be first in the market with new features and technologies. Further an over emphasis on these parameters made them “handicapped” when related to speediness and to be first in the market.

It is interesting to relate this discussion to the Japanese cultural background. In the 1980s and 1990s when the “learning from Japan”movement was at its peak, one of the dominating arguments for explaining the Japanese success was their adaptation capability of new technologies, invented and developed in Western countries. According to the presented theories, the Japanese were excellent to take over already “invented” technologies,to develop them further and to add superior quality attributes, because these adaptation capabilities are deeply rooted and integrated in all aspects of the Japanese society, culture and history, e.g. Monozukuri, socialisation processes,education, traditional art schools etc. (Passin, 1965; Lee, 1982; Hendry, 1989; Dahlgaard-Park and Larsen, 1990).

Related to the notion of fundamental and intractable contradictions between the capabilities and practices required for incremental versus radical innovation (Lee, 1982; March, 1991)the old debates on culture determinism seem to be revitalized. If the Japanese people are able to “reprogram” their mental and cognitive structure and to show their innovative capabilities side by side with the kaizencapability then they truly deserve to be called “masters of quality”and at the same time they will be able to challenge the world community of quality once again.

Another challenge to the field of quality management is presented by Gummesson (2008) who is a well known scholar within service management. According to Gummesson the three concepts of quality, customer satisfaction and value may have cores that differentiate them, but their boundaries are blurred and partly overlapping. Furthermore he shows through a single case study that there are multiple sources for quality creations.

Quality contributions can come from multiple actors such as the supplier, the customer, interactions between suppliers and customers, and other members of the complex network in which suppliers and customers are embedded. As there are multiple sources for quality creation, Gummesson suggests switching over from the traditional linear thinking pattern such as supplier value chain to network thinking and use the concepts of supplier value networks and customer value networks.

Besides his suggestion on network thinking within the quality field,Gummesson argues for the adoptability of case studies research methodology as a suitable research methodology when the purpose is to gain insights into phenomena characterised by complexity in a wide sense – abundance of variables and links between them, unclear causality, ambiguity, ongoing change and unpredictability. He is aware that what he argues is not the mainstream academic research road, however:

… we have to try the roads less travelled by, because it can reveal unseen reality. We need reflective academics as well as reflective practitioners. Even a dead fish can float downstream but it takes a live one to swim upstream (W.C. Fields, requoted from Gummesson).

In his paper Baccarani (2008) reviews the concept of ethics in relationship with management and investigates whether it is an empty objective for “playing with words” or whether it has real substance which we should rediscover and utilise in management and business practices.

The author refers to the original meaning of the word “ethic”,which is habit, custom, traditions, behaviour, the way people used to. The meaning is also about desires to know the good, desiring the good, doing the good which people like to habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action (Dahlgaard-Park and Dahlgaard, 2003). These meanings are related to generally recognised and accepted values of a certain community. As values are always related to judgement of right and wrong, the recognised and accepted values have their foundation in wisdom of the community.

The author then discusses ethics by presenting some relevant questions in relationship with business, for instance, “can one talk about ethics if the objective of the business is to maximise profit?” – the well known debate ever since Milton Friedman (1970) strongly argued for his stockholder view. The answer is in the grey zone of both no and yes, depending on the interpretation of the role of profit. If profit is seen as the residual and natural consequence of seeking to bring benefits to the stakeholders, the answer becomes “yes”. To another critical question of whether ethical behaviour does pay, the author’s answer is “yes”,if we look into a long perspective, because ethics is a formula for survival or a “survival DNA” (Dahlgaard-Park and Dahlgaard, 2003)in the long run. Does this then mean that ethical dimension is a natural part of quality and hence to be included in the framework of quality or is it too much of a good thing?

It is up to the individual actors within the quality field to reflect and to decide if these new areas are “too much of a good thing” and hence have to be ignored and excluded from the quality management framework, or if it makes sense to be included in order to better attain excellence.

With the last paper by Hellström and Eriksson (2008)we are definitely “back to basics” (Klefsjö, Bergquist and Garvare). Nobody within the quality field will argue that process orientation is“too much of a good thing” i.e. an obsolete principle which should be taken away from the quality models/frameworks.

In the paper it is argued that there should be more attention to how process orientation has been applied in organisations today because the principle of process orientation has been regarded as perhaps the most important management idea of the last 20-30 years (Cole and Scott, 2000). So the question seems maybe rather if process orientation in practice is “too little of a good thing”?

To answer this question the paper is presenting a status of process orientation in Swedish Health Care. The results show, what many may have experienced, that there is a fairly low application of process orientation in(Swedish) health care. The usage of the principle of process orientation is explained by the following three factors identified in a principal component analysis:

• 1.

  process management;

• 2.

  process mapping; and

• 3.

  process view.

In an analysis of 121 respondents from Swedish health care organisations,about the relations between the status and desired relationship between line organisation and process orientation, it is shown that ten respondents experienced a status 1 situation, which means a “Traditional line organisation. Processes are not talked about”. A total of 67 respondents experienced a status 2 situation which means a “Traditional line organisation. The process initiative is foremost used as an improvement method”. Most of the respondents wish to “climb” to a higher status where real process management is used in their daily work. The results indicate strongly that the reason for the current “disease of health care” is too little of the good thing called process orientation. To cure health care (and I believe most other organizations) there seems to be a strong need for more practice of process orientation. Why is that so difficult? This question is not analysed in the paper.

Finally I would like to express my sincere appreciation to all members in the QMOD community who during the last ten years have shared their ideas, experience and knowledge and in that way have contributed in enriching our collective knowledge. In particular I thank all reviewers and session chairs (see the lists of reviewers and session chairs at www.ch.lu.se/qmod) who made great efforts in reading, selecting and reviewing papers. In addition, I also would like to thank Dr Alex Douglas, editor of The TQM Journal for his valuable suggestions for this special issue.

Su Mi Dahlgaard-ParkDr Prof., Research Director, Co-founder and Chair of the Scientific Committee, Int. QMOD Conference, Institute of Service Management, Lund University, Sweden