This study examines a series of relationships between total quality management (TQM) and information systems (IS) development. Specifically, we consider whether organizations which have more fully adopted TQM will be different in their approaches to IS development. Our findings suggest that where TQM is adopted more fully, there will be a significant impact on four areas of IS development: system goals; system design philosophy/concepts; assumptions made by IS professionals about system users and user involvement in system development. We also report evidence that both TQM and IT may require similar organizational cultures.
In this study, we examine the potential relationships between two widely adopted strategies for dealing with the need to gain competitiveness by organizations throughout the US. One series of strategies involves the adoption of the many quality management programs falling generally under the total quality management (TQM) rubric, while another approach has emphasized the use of information systems (IS) or information technology (IT) as a vehicle for attaining quality. Both programs offer potential for responding to customer needs, effecting cost savings, and the like, and considerable study has been directed toward their impacts upon a variety of organizational effectiveness measures [1], [2], [3], [4] and [5]. However, we were unable to discover empirical evidence on their impacts upon each other in the organizational setting [6] and [7]. Yet research dating back to the early work in the development of socio-technical systems theory [8] and [9] has consistently shown that the systems comprising an organization cannot be examined in isolation, and that changes in one system will inevitably impact others. In this study, we examine the inter-relationships among three organizational factors: TQM program adoption; IS development and culture. Specifically, we consider whether organizations which have more fully adopted TQM will approach IS development differently from those with less TQM adoption and the effects by and upon culture.
In this paper, we report results of an exploratory study of the relationships between TQM maturity and IS development. We began by contending that both TQM and IS have been proposed as vehicles for improving organizational efficiency and productivity. Logically, synergies should result when the two approaches are used in concert. However, we proposed that “being on” TQM may not be sufficient, and that projected benefits will be realized only when organizations grow in their qualitative use of TQM or, in this study’s terms, in TQM maturity. We found that TQM maturity is multi-dimensional and could be measured along three dimensions: TQM program use, perceived influence, and TQM understanding (see Fig. 2). We argue that when organizations become more TQM mature, more TQM programs will be used at different organizational levels, and individuals will report higher levels of influence on quality issues and better understanding of TQM concepts. Overall, our results show very strong correlation among these factors. Furthermore, factor analysis revealed that the TQM program use and understanding dimensions further reduced to several sub-factors.
We next examined relationships between the factors comprising TQM maturity and users’ perceptions about how IS has approached systems development (note, again, that our sample consisted of managers whose organizations had recently been involved in systems development and who, therefore, presumably had a reasonable basis for making judgments). Our guiding rationale was that, in more TQM Mature organizations, the TQM philosophy should be widely shared and incorporated into the way IS staff conducts its development activities. Fig. 3 shows support for the relationships we expected. Specifically, we found that, in more TQM mature organizations, IS staff was perceived by users as more oriented toward social goals (RQ2a), as emphasizing employee empowerment and self-learning (RQ2b), as making more positive assumptions about users (RQ2c), and as involving users more in systems development (RQ2d). Finally, we expected relationships between TQM maturity and a TQM-supportive culture.
