By Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter
Wishful thinking has led many educators to believe that Total Quality Management applies only to business--not to higher education, a very different sort of endeavor. Others watch TQM creep into the university, but consider this phenomenon applicable only to support functions or the business school.
Just what is Total Quality Management? The meaning of this movement now sweeping higher education is hard to pin down. TQM can range from a new name to freshen up the same old policies, to a full-scale educational reform program, or to a reorganization plan for an entire institution. In any of these incarnations, TQM definitely requires a response from unions.
Some analysts have concluded that TQM faddishness will encourage the inappropriate use of otherwise good statistical and organizational tools. Implemented inappropriately, these observers note, a TQM program could prove to be a Trojan Horse of common sense ideas. Behind these common sense ideas: attacks on faculty and staff working conditions.
We argue that the dangers of TQM go beyond these problems of implementation: Beneath the ambiguity and the attractive features there is a core logic to TQM theory and practice that goes "against" the educational and professional values and the conception of work that unions advance.
Specifically, management-driven TQM programs:
We suggest some ways that unions in a higher education setting can respond to the problems TQM claims to address and to TQM itself.
WHAT'S BEHIND THE TQM MOVEMENT
Total Quality Management advocates usually begin by pointing to the real pressures on higher education: Technology is driving a sustained information explosion. The globalization of the economy requires increased knowledge and understanding of world-wide developments in virtually every field. The public expects education to solve, or at least to compensate for, every social problem. If workers do not have good jobs, then the problem must be their training. If young people are heavily into drugs, sex, violence, racism, or selfishness, then find the cause and the solution in the education system. At the same time that costs are escalating, education budgets are being slashed. TQM advocates mix in a lack of direction and instances of corruption and poor teaching, and the case for "some" sort of overhaul of the system is made. TQM advocates remind us that vast resources--unnecessary red tape, departments that duplicate each other's work or, worse, actually work at cross purposes--could be redirected from wasteful practices to desperately needed programs.
To move toward this redirection, managers in education around the world are increasingly talking about Total Quality Management and Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI). Other related phrases include lean production, team concept, agile institutions, and modern operating agreements. We think "management-by-stress" is a more accurate label for this new approach to managing education.
The most prominent person associated with this approach is the late W. Edwards Deming, an American statistician who is revered in Japan for his contribution to the rebuilding of Japanese industries after World War II. The annual "Deming Prize" for quality is much sought after in Japan.
Other Americans like Joseph Juran and Armand Feigenbaum, as well as Japanese industrial engineers, contributed to the initial body of ideas that make up the TQM approach. While Japanese industry developed and refined the theory and practice, U.S. industry largely ignored the phenomenon until the 1980s, when intense international competition made American managers desperate. Deming and other quality gurus who knew the secrets of the Japanese were suddenly in big demand.
Still, five years ago, TQM programs in higher education were rare. The few initial experiments with TQM in higher education concentrated on administration and plant services and carefully avoided teaching and research. Over recent years, however, reports about successes in these areas have made TQM an increasingly attractive strategy.
Oregon State University's TQM teams are widely cited. OSU's physical plant team reduced the average time for remodeling jobs 29 percent (estimated savings: $219,539), and the university's printing/ mailing team implemented six solutions to cut pre-press time (estimated savings $16,224). The examples go on(1)--notice the precision of these estimates. Elsewhere, similar stories. The University of Wisconsin reduced the time for Graduate School processing of admissions applications from 26 days to three.(2)
TQM is now at the center of the strategic debate on the future of education, and the first wave of what will be a flood of books specifically applying TQM to higher education is now available. Entire recent issues of the periodicals "Higher Education", "Change", and "Educational Record" promote TQM in higher education.
On the surface, TQM or CQI programs seem to be well-defined: A set of common tools, a methodology focusing on process, and an orientation toward customers. Yet a simple definition or description is elusive. In his survey, David Entin(3) found that TQM advocates stated or acknowledged "that TQM had much in common with good-sense management techniques." And many of the TQM success stories seem to be just that: TQM provided the opportunity for management to hear or use common sense. If all TQM means is that "we want to improve quality using good sense," there is no argument here. But the real issue here is the definition of quality--what we see as the goal of education. This then becomes the core of the discussion. With no agreed-upon definition of quality, TQM prescriptions for teaching and research vary widely and are often in contradiction: from increasing cross-disciplinary studies to more rigidly compartmentalized curricula; from abolishing grades and any form of examination (inspection) to organizing the curriculum around nationally developed standardized tests.
Sometimes TQM seems disarmingly simple:
We apply a fundamental TQM "tool" the Shewart Cycle (Plan-Do-Check-Act) to our instructional process by: 1) establishing very specific course objectives (plan), 2) having our instructors teach to those objectives (do), 3) assess the learning of the students and the effectiveness of the instruction (check), and 4) use the data on the outcomes assessment to improve the process (act).
The field of education is similar to the field of business. We in education supply a service (education), start with a raw material (students), apply a process (teaching), and turn out a finished product (graduates).(4)
The TQM literature occasionally contains appropriate cautions. Some observers have noted the aura of the "true believer"--religious fundamentalism, sectarianism, and the worship of competing gurus--that surrounds TQM(5) and suggest that we need more evidence. But many people are ready to move full steam ahead. A California commission paper recommends adopting a full-scale TQM program for the entire state community college system, a move that would require a "profound change in the organizational culture."(6) The arguments and evidence for TQM bring to mind other cure-alls for serious problems. Until the 19th century, bloodletting was the cure of choice for many illnesses. Anecdotal evidence buttressed the medical theory of the day. No doubt some very sick flu patients became very healthy soon after bloodletting. This reinforced the grain of truth in the medieval theory, and modern medicine has determined that there are indeed some conditions--erythremia, for one--that are properly treated by bloodletting.
This analogy to bloodletting holds at several levels. TQM is often the vehicle for "downsizing" an institution and eliminating workers whom some believe to be waste or excess in the system.
At least in the case of bloodletting we can specify exactly what we mean and can test the idea under various conditions. TQM, on the other hand, has no commonly accepted operational definition and avoids a real test.
Leading quality gurus attack each other and insist that they have major philosophical and methodological differences. W. Edwards Deming would not even use the term TQM and dismissed it as "instant pudding."
For many,(7) the definition of TQM or the roadmap to it--even for education--lies in the "Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award." The Department of Commerce, assisted by the American Society for Quality Control, administers this award, established by law in 1987, to encourage quality in the private sector in manufacturing, service, and small business categories. Currently pending are several proposals to create such an award competition for higher education.(8)
On the other hand, many quality gurus, including Deming, Philip Crosby, and Tom Peters, have denounced the Award. Crosby, for example, says:
As a quality practitioner who for the past 40 years has had the real-life responsibility for installing quality management in organizations, I recognize that the Baldrige criteria have trivialized the quality crusade, perhaps beyond help. One day this do-it-yourself kit may be recognized as the cause of a permanent decline in product and service quality management in the United States.
Perhaps as George Keller, University of Pennsylvania higher education division chair, says, "TQM is like a penny a child has swallowed. It too will some day pass."(9) But, even while passing through, the implications of TQM for higher education staff and faculty may be enormous--if TQM changes work rules, procedures, methods of teaching, and workloads as well as the general direction of the institutions it touches. Even if TQM proves to be a total failure in terms of its stated goals, the changes and the damage from its passing through may not be reversible. Unions representing faculty and staff would do well to examine TQM very carefully.
THE TRUTH BEHIND TQM IN MANUFACTURING
The application of TQM in education is based on two assumptions:
What debate there is over TQM in higher education circles seems to grant the successful application of TQM in manufacturing and to concentrate on questioning its applicability to the academic side of education.(10)
TQM success stories in manufacturing are regular media features. Few companies publicize their failures or readily give reporters access to information that might prove embarrassing. Yet TQM or similar programs have an astoundingly poor track record.
The authors of one TQM text estimate that "for every successful implementation, such as Motorola, there are 20 more disasters."(11) The Leads Corporation, self-described "leader in the field of Total Quality Management," sends out a mailing soliciting for its training that declares in large letters on its cover: "Although thousands of organizations have spent millions on TQM training, 80 percent of all TQM initiatives are stalled or failing."(12) Business and quality consultant journals are filled with articles bemoaning the high failure rate of TQM.(13) TQM's failure rate is impossible to ignore. TQM advocate Steven Brigham, director of the Continuous Quality Improvement Project at the American Association for Higher Education, summarizes business studies of TQM:
Surveys conducted by Arthur D. Little, A. T. Kearney, Ernst and Young, McKinsey and Company, and Rath and Strong . . . have reached similar conclusions: in more cases than not, TQM has failed to produce its promised results.(14)
Brigham falls back to what seems to be the current standard explanation: These studies do not show that TQM philosophy is seriously flawed, rather "that the implementation is deficient, even erroneous." According to Brigham:
The best evidence that TQM "works" comes from a May, 1991 U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) report that examines the impact of TQM on the performance of U.S. companies that were among the highest scoring applicants in 1988 and 1989 for the Malcolm Baldrige Award.
Let's look briefly at this "best" evidence. The Baldrige Award does not seek to measure the "quality" of a company's goods or services. It measures only whether the company uses what some believe to be TQM organizational forms and procedures. Companies are self-nominated and spend large amounts of time on paperwork and fees.
Now comes the GAO seeking to study the impact of TQM. The GAO doesn't compare TQM users to non-users, or users' practices before and after TQM. Nor does the GAO make its own independent measures of success. Instead the GAO asks those applicants who scored high on the Baldrige TQM scale how the companies evaluated themselves in a number of areas. Further, the GAO ignores those areas where the companies decline to answer. Is it reasonable to expect that a company which tried TQM and failed would bother applying for the Baldrige Award? In effect, the GAO methodology is to ask people who think their TQM works whether they think their TQM works.(15) One of the precepts of TQM is that it must be "data driven." "In God we trust, everyone else must provide data" is a favorite Deming quip. Given the absence of data supporting the effectiveness of TQM, how can TQM advocates, the leaders of our higher education system, push ahead for TQM with such fervor? We see at least four reasons:
THE TQM BIBLE
Beneath the massive confusion and contrary claims, there is a common core to TQM as it has been applied in the private sector. To examine the implications of TQM for education, it is important to remember that every field, every industry, has its own special characteristics, problems, and, therefore, its own debates. Debates over the purpose of education, how learning happens, questions of assessment and accountability raged before TQM. TQM cannot be faulted for failing to resolve these issues. But we need to ask what the implications of TQM are in this context. Does TQM tilt the debate in a particular direction?
Focus on the Customer
All TQM programs insist that the focus of activities must be on the customer. But, even in manufacturing, determining who the customer is turns out to be much more difficult than it appears. In higher education, the question always generates intense debate: Is the customer the student? The parents? The taxpayers, the academic community, businesses that will hire the graduates, graduate schools, the local community, the national public interest, the international public interest, truth, knowledge, justice?
If the customer is the student, are customer needs what students "think" they need when they apply to college, or what students will discover in later life is really beneficial? Or should student needs be determined by others who already know these things? Are we talking about what students need for their envisioned career, the skills they may need to support themselves, or what they need to be good citizens? Do government and literature courses help a person to be a better engineer?
The list of questions grows. The definition of "the customer" is really the pre-TQM question of the goals of education. As most readers will suspect, the debates never come near consensus except to say that higher education has many different customers.
Insofar as TQM leads toward identifying the different objectives of education, it provides a valuable service. But TQM is a model that depends on actually establishing customer needs. In theory, TQM cannot progress further without resolving who the customer is.
You cannot focus your activities on your customer's needs if you cannot define your customer. You can't gather data on "how we are doing" if you don't know how to weight conflicting evaluations by students, colleagues, future employers, and alumni. Nor can you decide how much time should be allocated to the competing demands of teaching, research, advising students, community service, or keeping up in the field.
Some TQM advocates resolve this difficulty by asserting that the student is the customer but someone else must determine what the student needs. Many argue that the model can be simplified by assuming that employers of graduates are the critical customers of higher education; fortuitously, the interests of all other "customers" will turn out to be the same in the long run.(16)
In practice, despite TQM's own requirement for clarity on this issue, TQM programs tend to side-step the question. They issue a vague mission statement including everybody as a customer, or they use the device of the "internal customer."
Under the "internal customer" paradigm, participants are told to look at the institution as a series of processes. Understand that the person--or process--who receives the results of your activities is your customer. If you work on an assembly line, then your customer is the next person on the assembly line, just as you are the customer of the previous worker ("supplier"). You meet the needs of your customers.
Similarly, in the academic setting, we flow-chart the process of a student's education. As one educational TQM consultant explains: If you are a 10th grade math teacher, then your customer is the 11th grade math teacher.(17) (Every teacher who has had students with the formal prerequisite courses but without the content can appreciate the important element of truth here.)
Flowcharting the Education System as a Series of Processes (after Rinehart, 1993) _______________________________ | Leadership: System Planning | | Design and Redesign to | | Meet Customer Requirements | ------------------------------- ______________ / | | | \ ___________ | Suppliers | -> Math -> Math -> Math -> Math -> Math -> |Customers| | (families) | 1 2 3 4 5 ----------- --------------
If, for a moment, we accept that the learning process can be flow-charted in an unambiguous linear fashion, and that the internal customers are correctly identified, there are still questions.
The customer focus of the 10th grade teacher is clearer--but only if we have correctly determined the requirements of the customer at the end of the chain. We also have to determine the requirements for the student raw material that enters in the beginning of the process--for example, prerequisites for high school math. Further, someone has to determine whether certain material should be covered in 11th grade or in 12th grade.
In other words, the "internal customer" concept seems to solve the problem for the teacher by assuming that someone else takes care of the big questions: What are the goals or purpose of education? Which students are admitted to the process? How is that process to be constructed? How are the individual steps in that process and the "customer requirements" for each step to be defined?
The rhetoric of TQM suggests that all of this is done automatically by a well-functioning process. The last operation in the process meets the needs of its (external) customer and thereby establishes what it needs from its supplier. And so on back through the process. But in a manufacturing operation this "invisible hand" is actually on the arm of management. It is the marketing department that determines who the targeted customers are, what should be produced at what price to try to capture which part of the market to make how much profit. It is management that determines the specifications--called "customer requirements"--that production workers must satisfy. Similarly, in the education field someone still has to decide the sticky questions of who the ultimate customers are and their relative importance, and translate their needs into specifications that mark the steps in the process. As the process chart makes clear, this is the leadership of the administration.(18)
This conception helps make sense of the TQM puzzle. Yes, faculty and staff are supposed to take more control over their work. But only within a more tightly controlled, defined space.
The flexibility in the system, then, is not flexibility for the faculty or staff to experiment. It is flexibility for the administration, freed from restrictions imposed by unions, traditions, or faculty governance, to move the pieces around to bring them into alignment with big goals.
To be sure, the administration opens communications and gets advice from faculty, staff, students, the community, business, and others. But, in the final analysis, the administration sets the major goals, determines the processes and the resources.
The control of the administration over the essential goals of the process is nothing new. But much of the history of teacher and staff organization has involved struggling against this control. TQM adds ideological and organizational bias toward stronger administration control over the educational process. This is both a question of power and a question of educational philosophy.
TQM presentations frequently include two arrow diagrams illustrating the relationship of the overall objectives of the institution (large arrow) and the objectives of the individual components or departments (small arrows). TQM claims to bring the small arrows into alignment with the overall goals.
"The power question": Since working conditions are bound to be greatly affected in "realigning" the individual and departmental activities, do the staff and faculty have any control over the fundamental goals with which they are to be aligned?
"The philosophical question": Does it serve education to create institutions where all parts are aligned? Or does good education require the give and take of independent directions and goals?
The only way that the TQM model of serving multiple customers can hold up is with a view of the world that denies any fundamental conflicts of interest. This goes beyond simply finding a "win- win" solution. It suggests that education can be organized in such a way that the "best" solution for "each" customer separately turns out to be the "same". Thus we can serve all the different customers at once.
But we would suggest that the reason the "customer of education" debate cannot and will not be resolved is that the institutions of education exist within a society of fundamental and deep social conflicts that are reflected back into every aspect of education. There is no place in the TQM model for this conflict.
Reduce Everything to Quantifiable Units
Another central theme of TQM is that it must be data-driven or use "management by fact."(19) In particular, TQM is oriented toward measurements and evaluations that can be expressed numerically. The classic tools of TQM include statistical process control charts, Pareto charts, histograms, and scattergrams. The tools are good ones, but, in the context of vague goals, the tools tend to define the direction of educational change rather than the direction determining how the tools are used. We would not want doctors to recommend surgery because they want to try out a new set of sharp knives. The emphasis on tools in most TQM programs tends to define the world of important things as those which can be "easily" quantified. This leads to a distortion and routinization of academic work.(20) TQM thus tends to bias the educational debate towards standardized tests, multiple choice, and other forms of more easily quantified measurements.
TQM biases the debate against important roles for teachers--including motivation, counseling, and role modeling--that are not so easily measured. A data-driven TQM approach to research will bias the process toward research that produces large short-term results, is of more immediate use to business, and can attract large grants.
Focus on Process, Reduce Variation
If there is a central core to TQM method, it is the focus on process rather then results. TQM rejects "dependence on inspection" as the way to achieve quality. You improve the result by breaking down (flow-charting) the process and improving each step. Improving each step means producing to specification for the next step. This in turn requires constant inputs from the previous step and an unvarying process within the step.
One of TQM's contributions to manufacturing quality was to reject the idea that if parts came into the process with variations, the process would adapt to make them work. This is "tampering," in Deming's terms, and only adds to the deviation from specifications that will result. Quality in TQM means standardizing the process and insisting that the raw materials come in at specification. Of course, this is done by applying the TQM method to the parts production as well.
If all the raw materials are standardized and all parts are made exactly the same, the final assembly will also show less variation. If a process is changed, it must be done only in a controlled way with the baseline established, the change recorded, and the results gathered and analyzed--and only with permission from management.
Some TQM advocates claim that TQM means the repudiation of the scientific management techniques of Frederick Taylor, symbolized by the classic Charlie Chaplin scenes of repetitive motion jobs in manufacturing. But, in both theory and reality, TQM requires increasingly "standardized work." In many factories, every operation--left hand holds assembly, right hand reaches for bolt--is written down and placed next to the work stations so that supervisors can see that workers adhere to the standards. What is new is that the worker may have "more" standardized jobs to do and that she may get to make suggestions on standardizing the procedure. Reducing variation is clearly desirable when we are talking about the surface of a roll of sheet steel (although if achieving that smooth surface requires a more stressful job, we would need to deal with the costs to the worker). But is uniformity either the goal or the best process in education? Administrators may think so. Uniformity helps administrators do their jobs. It simplifies operations and makes it easier for administrators to stay in control.
"The logic of TQM": "Quality teaching" means presenting the same material in the same way each time or to adjust the presentation only under controlled circumstances with approval from whoever sets the overall specifications.
"The power aspect of this conception": TQM implies the reduction of individual discretion (exercise of judgment) in daily work. Judgment thus tends to be limited to making recommendations to those responsible for the bigger system. This is depowering, not empowering.
The no-variation concept is biased against those who believe that creating a learning atmosphere requires a climate where variation thrives and, in particular, where seemingly unproductive, unpopular ideas are protected. The TQM definition some use--"doing it right the first time"--is an indication of the standardization mentality that is completely antithetical to a learning atmosphere.
Reducing variation is central to TQM theory, but many TQM advocates, including Deming's followers, make an exception for education. They call for "understanding" rather than reducing variation. But other consultants in the education field simply transfer the methods from industry and announce in big letters: "Variation is the Enemy."(21)
Doing it the same way every time means that every job must be precisely documented so that someone else can do it. Sometimes this conception of quality programs is expressed openly. For example, a Du Pont manual for understanding a quality process program states, "The unwritten standard . . . is that if all personnel were suddenly replaced the new people could continue making the product or providing the service as before."(22) Consider the implications for teaching or unions!
Constant Improvement/Management-by-Stress
Perhaps the most important theme of TQM is the seemingly unobjectionable idea of continuous improvement. The system is designed to force workers to "improve" (speed up) toward goals set by management. We think this system of work organization is best described as "management-by-stress." Elsewhere we have analyzed in some detail how this system works in manufacturing.(23) But its basic principles apply in other sectors: Design the system properly so that the system, rather than direct supervision, forces people to respond. For example, specify the required results as well as the allowed resources or budget, and let the work team figure out how to make it work. And when the team succeeds, maintain the requirements while decreasing the budget--in the name of constant improvement. Keep up the pressure to succeed through a combination of fear, peer pressure, and rewards. Resist filling absences--appeal to commitment to the institution or professionalism to take up the slack. Many TQM advocates refer to this process as "empowerment." Actually, it is the opposite--the classic stressor: responsibility without authority.
As a cautious TQM advocate properly explains: "TQ's notion of empowerment is intended less to serve the worker than the process--and its customers."(24)
"DEADLY DISEASES": PERFORMANCE AND ANNUAL REVIEWS
These common themes of TQM tend to produce common results. In manufacturing, job loss and shifting work away from bargaining units are closely identified with the new strategies of work organization. TQM lays the basis for more use of part-timers, temporary workers, and contracting out because it breaks down jobs to their smallest units and sets and documents standard procedures for doing the job. TQM problem-solving procedures are then used to fix any glitches.
The same methods are easily transferred to education. Consider this parable Daniel Seymour(25) uses to explain one TQM method: getting at the root cause of a problem through asking repeated "why's." In this case the student, Jimmy, failed. Why? He was exhausted from studying. Why? His school workload was overwhelming. Why? The part-time teachers who had taught the prerequisite courses did not cover the material required in Jimmy's recent courses. Why? Because they did not have contact with the other professors. Why? The department did not do orientation for part-timers, and there was little communication between part-timers and full-timers. At this point, the teachers are admitted to the process, to solve the Jimmy problem. The implied solution is to make sure that there is better documentation for the part-timers and better communication with the regular faculty. The fact of part-timers is taken for granted. The parable does not ask the question of why the teaching is done by part-time rather than full-time faculty and pursue the solution along that logical path.
From an exact repeatability point of view, jobs would best be done by robots, computerized lessons, or videotapes of professional actors following a carefully crafted script. Indeed, some TQM advocates see use of telecourses, or distance learning technologies, as a central strategy.(26)
The other main result of TQM is a transfer of control. That management sees its job as controlling and strives for more control is not new. Nor is it new that this control is challenged by faculty, staff, and students. TQM provides an opportunity for management to strengthen its control through both organizational forms and ideology.
The very vagueness of TQM makes it all the more attractive to those in charge. They can "cherry-pick" the policies and educational philosophies that fit their agendas, confident that they can find a defense from one or another quality guru or from the thousands of consultants who have created their own brands of TQM. Or they can claim they have synthesized and adapted the best in-house. As a result, there are wild and contradictory extremes in TQM approaches. Despite the demonstrably poor results, TQM continues to be popular because it serves the needs of administrators for control and protection in much the same fashion as other educational fads like competency.(27)
The aspects of TQM philosophy that are closest to unions' are among the first to be discarded. Few programs eradicate what Deming calls "deadly diseases": performance evaluations, merit ratings, and annual reviews. And most administrators of TQM programs consciously do the opposite of Deming's admonition to "drive out fear." Deming uses higher education to illustrate his point: "It is worthy of note that the 80 American Nobel Prize Winners all had tenure, security. They were answerable only to themselves."(28) But many TQM advocates are ready to embrace other Deming points that conveniently fit administration agendas. Deming's injunction to "maintain constancy of purpose" becomes the rationale for chopping the weaker, less profitable sections of the university community, thus maximizing an atmosphere of fear and insecurity for the workforce. This is a vision of continuous intense competition to survive. "Agile institutions"--the newest buzzword--focus on their "core businesses" and contract out everything else on an as-needed basis.
Administrators and boards at many institutions will need to perform triage on their institutions' programs. Weak programs will need to be eliminated in order to redirect resources to strengthen middle-quality programs (to protect them from distant but higher-quality competitors) and/or enhance already strong programs (which might be exported via distance technologies . . . ).(29)
A PLACE FOR UNIONS IN TQM?
Earlier we suggested that the TQM notion of "serving the customer" serves to mystify and hide the role of management--and its needs and politics--in actually making the decisions. Consider now the role of the worker in the TQM customer model.
In reality, the model is something more than simply focusing on the customer. If all we cared about is pleasing customers, decisions would be fairly easy. We would add features and services while decreasing prices. Logically, greater customer satisfaction results when cash rebates exceed the total cost of an automobile.
Clearly, other conditions besides customer satisfaction are needed for the model to tend toward any equilibrium. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO)(30) quality standards widely adopted by businesses and now learning institutions explicitly define quality by balancing customer needs and company needs. The section on "Benefit Considerations" reads:
For the company, consideration has to be given to increased profitability and market share. For the customer, consideration has to be given to reduced costs, improved fitness for use, increased satisfaction and growth in confidence.(31)
For the company, there is a business need to attain and to maintain the desired quality at an optimum cost [requiring] planned and efficient utilization of the technological, human, and material resources available to the company.(32)
Thus quality programs are built on clear business ideological premises: Companies exist at the intersection of management needs for profitability and customer needs for products. Since it is management that selects the customers to target and what products or services to offer them, it is a quality world built around management.
Workers are not part of the main equation. Workers fit in insofar as they can be used effectively by management. If effective use means creative, well-paid jobs, then workers benefit. But if efficiency means moving to Mexico, fewer jobs, lower wages, speed-up, then that, too, is what's called for--in the name of quality.
Thus the notion of "serving the customer" contains an implicit model of the role of the employee: all-sacrificing and expendable by management. This profoundly anti-worker point of view dove-tails with the ideology of deregulation and other right-wing economic theory.
Unions start with a different world view: that the purpose of work is to improve the conditions of life individually and collectively. Therefore questions of working conditions, job security, and compensation should be at least as important as productivity and customer satisfaction in our model of exchange in society. Since most "customers" work, a general movement toward improving working conditions contributes greatly to the general welfare.
But this conception puts unions in the way of TQM. TQM ideology undermines union legitimacy by contributing to the idea that improving the conditions of work, unless directly connected to value for the customer or increased profitability, is a selfish act that contributes to the decay of the institution.
In this sense, TQM represents a step backwards from management's previous focus on strategic planning, which at least talked about "stakeholders" with various interests in how the institution operates. Employees were valid stakeholders with interests that would have to be figured into the grand bargain.
Indeed, there is no real place for a union in core TQM ideology. Where unions have found even partially satisfactory roles in institutions that have adopted TQM-type programs, it is through relying on their own power and program and not the logic of TQM. In some cases, management may make allowances to avoid a fight with an already present union. But the extent to which the union strongly and independently pursues its members' interests is the extent to which it is in tension with TQM logic, even if it endorses TQM. Thus management's drive either to absorb unions and convert them to a kind of company union or to isolate them and decertify them. The impact of TQM extends past the workplace. TQM claims a systems approach and a methodology of optimizing the system instead of its sub-parts, but it has simply shifted the focus up one or two levels, from the individual job or department to the university or college. But these exist within the larger systems of higher education, and in society. In trying to optimize the individual institutions, TQM advocates violate the important TQM insight that optimizing the sub-units of a system is likely to produce undesirable results for the system as a whole.
TQM is not just a workplace issue. What kind of society will result if every institution adopts TQM? What happens if every plant and office and school becomes "efficient" by forcing injured and older workers, who cannot maintain the pace, to quit, or by eliminating every program which is not a money-maker?
What happens when every company paying decent wages cuts its workforce to the minimum and contracts out most of its work to temporaries or companies that pay minimum wage? What happens if every institution becomes a "virtual" one with only a core of stable managers moving temporary units in and out, much as the movie industry is organized? What happens when "karoshi", sudden death from overwork, becomes a problem here as it is now recognized in Japan?
ANATOMY OF A UNION PLAN
The vast territory covered by TQM means there can be no single or simple union response. From various experiences of unions in the manufacturing and the service sectors, we suggest that a union strategy should include the following elements:
Endnotes
Works Cited
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Author Notes
Some of the material in this article has been presented at state NEA conferences and at the 1992 NEA Higher Education Conference in San Diego.
Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter are coauthors of Choosing Sides: Unions and the Team Concept and write regularly for Labor Notes, a publication for trade union activists. Slaughter directs the Labor Education and Research Project and consults in areas of industrial automation, training, and work organization. The authors work with unions in developing strategies for dealing with quality and other work reorganization programs.