The impact of culture on the successful implementation of quality management systems

Abstract

Irrespective of the nature of organisations, they all face a certain amount of uncertainty and risk. In order to maintain resilience, competitiveness and performance, organisations must have a system in place to manage the risks associated to their organisations. The challenge is to determine how much risk and uncertainty is acceptable, and how to cost effectively manage the risk and uncertainty while meeting the organisation's strategic and operational objectives. For many large organisations, quality or so called 'customer perceived quality', has become an issue of survival. Furthermore, increased competitiveness is necessary in order to become the obvious choice for the customer. Corporations must have long term goals and Quality Management Systems serve as organised mechanisms to manage quality, effectiveness and competitiveness involving everyone at all levels of the organisation. An understanding of culture in organisations can thus offer insight into individual and group behaviour, and leadership. Furthermore, it can help to explain not just 'what' happens in an organisation, but 'why' it happens. Companies view culture as something to be influenced to achieve organisational goals of productivity and profitability. Attempts to change the culture of an organization, may meet with varied levels of success. The emphasis on quality building products, have been the focus of the construction industry in South Africa. As a supplier of extruded aluminium profiles to the building industry, Hulamin Extrusions is also faced with typical challenges representative of the industry and as a result, the following aspects would be subjected to research scrutiny: ~ Introduction of a Quality Management System. ~ The challenges of organisational culture. ~ The need for change management. ~ Facilitating the implementation of the system. ~ Continuous Improvement. The researcher anticipates finding ways to improve organisational culture, which in turn would facilitate quality improvement within the organisation.