The Concept of Total Quality Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

The Concept of Total Quality Management - Essay Example One example of such organizations with ideal TQM environments was Xerox under the leadership of David Kearns, who served as its CEO from 1982 to 1990. What Kearns did for the downward spiraling company became a landmark in the history of quality management. Henceforth, this essay will endeavor to examine Kearns’ role as a quality leader in Xerox, his management approach and the applicability and certain processes of such approach, and finally, the issues that followed Kearns’ administration. David Kearns’ assumption as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 1982 was not without eventualities. Before bringing quality into the forefront of management, Kearns had to confront â€Å"skepticism and resistance† (Pfeffer, 1992, p.317). There was already a fixed mindset among top managers that Xerox was a world-class corporation and therefore need not change. Kearns said of his time as a leader: â€Å"One of the main things I learned at Xerox is that radical change in any organization is incredibly painful. In the language of change theorists, we were moving between several different states† (Kearns & Harvey, 2000, p.79). When statistics finally provided evidence of the company’s bad performance, Kearns and his management team formulated an integrated bottom-up and top-down TQM approach focused on increasing customer satisfaction and striking a balance between quality processes and quality outcomes. The approach was governed by the Leadership through a Quali ty policy which revolved around four areas or goals where quality must be directed: customer, employee, the business, and process. This holistic policy â€Å"radically changed† Xerox’s business outlook. Throughout the whole ordeal, Kearns’ thought of himself as the â€Å"captain of a sinking ship.† When he became CEO, he believed Xerox was already on the brink of going under due to unsolved internal and external problems  (Novgorod State University, n.d.; Kretchmar, 1992).