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    The Problem with Quality Management: Process orientation, controllability and zero-defect processes as modern myths
    The Problem with Quality Management: Process orientation, controllability and zero-defect processes as modern myths
    The Problem with Quality Management: Process orientation, controllability and zero-defect processes as modern myths
    Ebook190 pages5 hours

    The Problem with Quality Management: Process orientation, controllability and zero-defect processes as modern myths

    By Bettina Warzecha

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    About this ebook

    Is the world predictable? Can we manage economic risks by using standards and indicators? Hardly any bank that got into the red in the aftermath of the US real estate crisis, was there without a differentiated quality management system. The book by Dr. Bettina Warzecha shows how quality management can not only reduce the quality of services and products of all kinds. With the help of quality management the way is open to a variety of possibilities to burn organizational knowledge, to waste employee competences, to drive away customers, to notch up financial losses, and to block the ability of management to make decisions in the long run. The author, who also taught this subject at the University of Göttingen, Germany, takes the reader on a journey to the epistemological roots of human thinking and pondering, which are probably not ignored as thoroughly and completely in any other subject area than in quality management.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherVerlag für Planung und Organisation
    Release dateJul 10, 2017
    ISBN9783981863826
    The Problem with Quality Management: Process orientation, controllability and zero-defect processes as modern myths
    Author

    Bettina Warzecha

    The author wrote her doctoral thesis about paradoxical patterns in organizational planning theories. Quality management is one of these theories. "The Problem of Quality Management" is a summary of her lecture at the University of Göttingen, Germany.

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      Book preview

      The Problem with Quality Management - Bettina Warzecha

      Preface

      Quality management (QM) is the name of one of the most important procedures with which organizations are supposed to be led and managed. In companies, administrations, schools and universities, hospitals and charity organizations – all are looking for possible standards that are discussed and approved in working group meetings and committees.

      Many of those involved in QM follow the conviction that with its help the quality of products and services can be continuously improved. QM seems to be closely related to the approved measures and testing techniques with which high quality goods of all kinds are proven. Who would not be a friend of the improvement of the quality in management?

      However, this overlooks the fact that QM does not have much in common with the measurements of product quality – and even less with improvement in a general sense. The word quality is supposed to counter possible obstacles, as the fathers of QM affirm generously. As is well known, good bait catches fine fish.

      Table of contents

      Preface

      What is quality and what is the subject of quality management (QM)?

      The general word quality

      The quality in quality management (QM)

      The procedures in quality management (QM)

      The myth of process orientation

      The process problem I: Processes and structures are two sides of the same coin

      The process problem II: Process/divisional organization against functional organization – a sham battle

      The process problem III: More and more interfaces

      The process problem IV: The loss of holism

      4.1. Processing means differentiating more and more in QM

      4.2. The problematic nature of differentiation

      4.3. What exactly happens during differentiation " in other words, the fragmentation of the whole in its parts?

      4.4. The unavoidable consequences of steadily increasing dissection: Mistakes and manipulation possibilities rise abruptly

      4.5. About the deeper causes of error emergence in the processes of differentiation and dissection

      The myth of zero-defect quality

      The cycle of continuous improvement

      The zero-defect problem I: The Black Belt as nitpicker

      The zero-defect problem II: Trapped in the past

      Modern quality management (QM) and its consequences

      How QM demotivates employees

      1.1. The role of employees in QM

      1.2. Unavoidable, general employee problems

      1.3. Concentration on the thumbscrews: the central employee problem in QM

      1.4. Ridiculing and blackmailing of employees in QM

      1.5. The sorcerer’s apprentices: How employee problems in QM produce more and more business problems

      How QM leads to the loss of knowledge in a company

      2.1. The measurement problem I: Measurement means relativization

      2.2. The measurement problem II: Not everything that is countable counts and not everything that counts is countable (Albert Einstein)

      2.3. The measurement problem III: The fallacy of quality measurements

      2.4. Loss of knowledge through the one-dimensional treatment of complexity

      2.5. Loss of knowledge through clinging to false estimations

      2.6. Loss of knowledge through the faith in controllability

      How QM worsens the quality of products and services

      3.1. Declining quality as a result of measurement, process and zero-defect problems

      3.2. Declining quality due to measurements

      Example: Care services

      3.3. Declining quality due to defective measurements

      Example: Student evaluations

      3.4. Declining quality of the products through continuous improvement of the processes

      Example: Services in telecommunication companies

      3.5. Declining quality due to the exploiting of limits

      3.6. Declining quality due to further manipulation in the run-up to measurements

      3.7. Declining quality due to fixed zero-defect requirements

      Example: Medical supplies

      3.8. Declining quality due to wrong priorities

      Example: The product risk management

      3.9. Declining quality due to the redefinition of traditional terms

      Example: The product sustainable investment

      3.10. Declining quality due to certification processes and internal and external audits

      3.11. Increasingly declining quality due to benchmarking, ratings, and rankings

      Example: Education and Pisa study

      Example: Rating of the final examination results

      Example: University rankings

      How quality management reduces value and profit and causes an explosion in costs

      4.1. Quality turns into figure skeletons – harbingers of conceptual and financial losses

      4.2. How QM thinks it saves money

      4.3. Analyses of costs and benefits in QM

      4.4. Costs that are ignored in the cost-benefit analyses of QM

      4.5. The dreamed of cost savings – and the reality

      4.6. Examples of cost issues

      Example: Comparison of domestic and foreign production with the figures average personnel costs, personnel costs per produced unit, personnel costs of the sales price, etc

      Example: Comparison of administrations with the figure total work time per case

      Example: Conversion of a research institution in a profit centre company – figure contribution margin per profit centre

      Example: Comparison of doctor’s surgeries with the figure personnel expense ratio

      References

      List of Tables

      List of Images

      I. What is quality and what is the subject of quality management (QM)?

      1. The general word quality

      Quality generally stands for the good, for what everybody desires, for the unquestionable, for sense and reason. Quality appears like a value by itself, which does not need to be justified further.

      Unfortunately, nonetheless, what is often the case with the good: not everyone is fascinated by it. For some people what the neighbour regards as quality is a dread. Just take a walk through a new housing area and have a look at a Scandinavian style house that has been built on the basis of 3-litre, energy-saving dwelling, right next to a futuristic designer house with all sorts of luxuries. Both home-owners will be intrigued by the quality they have managed to afford. And still, apart from this similarity, they do not seem to have much in common.

      Quality is always both. It is something relative and subjective, which changes with the individual perspective. Nonetheless, it cannot be denied that people can well distinguish between good and bad, between right and wrong. Unquestionable, objective quality criteria for technical products are, for instance, functionality, durability, environment friendliness, user and restoration friendliness. Food is generally of good quality if it has all necessary nutrients, minerals and vitamins, and is not contaminated.

      The ambiguity of the word quality can be traced back to a paradox, which will be examined further by taking a closer look at two quality criteria of clothing: fashionable and warming. However, in order to define these two characteristics, we have to bear in mind the basic rules of definition: the word to be defined cannot be part of the explanation. Thus, the quality criteria fashionable and warming have to be described without using these same words.

      What is fashion? The definition in German Brockhaus states: A style of an epoch that changes quickly with changing preferences of a culture, civilization or lifestyle. Fashion is produced on a short-term basis, is not predictable and arbitrary.¹ But what is a preference, culture, or civilization? Moreover, the definition of these words makes their relationship to other words necessary, which again need to be explained. The attempt to define what is fashionable thus does not end at all. The assignment of the quality criterion fashionable to a piece of clothing depends on numerous criteria (upon which two competing designers could never agree). The description of the criterion fashionable leads us to infinity, into a so-called infinite regress. It is possible to say something about this criterion, but it is still impossible to capture it with certainty.

      Now perhaps the quality criterion warming can be described better. The property warming means that a particular body temperature is maintained. What is temperature? Temperature is measured according to the expansion of particular substances. What is expansion? Expansion is not only the main feature of the room (this aspect can be safely neglected here), but the change in temperature by heat (heating). What causes the change in body temperature by heating? Now the word cannot be avoided any longer: it is warmth! We have now thought in a circle – in a vicious circle (Mauthner 1923: 248-250). Such a circle is right, but it also lacks explanation. In this case it means: warmth = warmth. The quality criterion warming is met if the piece of clothes provides warmth.

      The problem of any definition of quality is therefore the fact that a single quality criterion can only be defined with its surroundings – namely the whole. The danger of getting lost in this whole (in an infinite regress) is then just as big as the danger of ending up with circular argumentation (in a vicious circle).

      Nonetheless, the paradox of the meaning of quality has never been a reason for giving up the search for real quality in times prior to quality management. In relation to traditional discourses in philosophy, it was said that quality is the real good and right. Even though this is not captured or described well by language, quality would be realized in the experience of the senses and the use. Real quality includes values that are independent of culture and time, values that concern all people.

      2. The quality in quality management (QM)

      The requirements of quality which are generally presupposed without question are not even met in part by QM. Usually there is silence with respect to any concrete definition. In QM insider circles nowadays – if a definition cannot be completely avoided – they refer at best to a definition after which quality is present if the requirements proposed beforehand are met in a production process. According to this interpretation, quality criteria are proposed and demanded by the decision makers in an organization. The management demands the requirements – and if these are met, this is quality. Table 1 contrasts the general understanding (common sense) of quality to the one in QM.

      While the general concept of quality is oriented to traditional values, the QM quality concept seems completely devoid of content. The extensive explanations and notes that often accompany this term support the impression that something is defined that in fact remains completely in the dark. The barely existing semantic content of the concise definition of quality does not become clearer with these notes, but rather once again it is relativized and appeased away. At the end we get a ghostly, lifeless emptiness ready at all times to be filled with absurdities and stupidities of any kind.

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