Human Resource Management and Total Quality Management

Essay by DavidNscoUniversity, Bachelor'sA+, June 2006

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1. Introduction

In today's global and hypercompetitive business environment, which is further "spiced up" with the fast changing and highly unpredictable customers' demand, the companies have to directly face their challenges to survive. This indicates that the firms have to be to large extend flexible and adaptable, regarding the current and up-coming problems, in order to effectively and efficiently deliver the best possible solution which will be further updated in accordance to the altering problem requirements.

Adoption of the flexible resource strategies can accommodate the companies with the "cure" for the above-stated condition. They make the organization more absorptive to the uncertainty shocks and more responsive to the demands of the internal and external customers. However they are also beneficial for the employees by improving and expanding their cooperative, communicative and learning skills.

Even though there are many flexible resource strategies, this paper focuses on analyzing the TQM philosophy in relation with HRM.

The purpose of this paper is to see how TQM and HRM integrate and how each HRM responsibility fits into the overall implementation process. Further the effects and the changes experienced by the employees and the organization are presented, each supported by real life example.

2. TQM and HRM

As stated above, these days it's extremely essential for a successful organization to be entirely customer driven - struggling for continuous increase of customer satisfaction through providing products/services, which explicitly meet the target markets' needs and expectations.

One on the management approaches, which is found to be highly consistent and closely related to the organizational requirements acknowledged above, is the TQM (Total Quality Management). Actually TQM provides a role model of organizational culture, behavior and structure, which combined together procure excellence in the course of improved customer satisfaction and zero defects in the products/services offered (Martin,