TQM Workforce Factors and Employee Involvement: The Pivotal Role of Teamwork

According to Cotton, EI is "a participative process to use the entire capacity of workers, designed to encourage employee commitment to organizational success" (1993: 3). In EI, employees are drawn into the work process through suggestions, increased communication, and/or incentives. In addition, EI initiatives often attempt to locate decisions at the lowest level in an organization. Thus, a well-implemented EI program may help organizations achieve a flatter structure, eliminate substantial amounts of staff and support work, and improve productivity, quality, and employee attitudes--issues critical for companies to keep a strong position in a highly competitive marketplace (Cotton, 1993; Lawler, 1994). TQM is a holistic management system that seeks to integrate functional areas across an organization to increase customer satisfaction and achieve continuous improvement (Crosby, 1979; Deming, 1986; Feigenbaum, 1991; Ishikawa, 1985; Juran, 1988; Juran and Gryna, 1993). TQM theory, as developed by the quality gurus, is an integrated management philosophy and set of practices that has an organization-wide focus on quality. It combines quality-oriented culture with intensive use of management and statistical tools to design and deliver quality products to customers (Aguayo, 1990; Berry, 1991; Crosby, 1979, 1984, 1989; Deming, 1986, 1994; Feigenbaum, 1991; Juran, 1988). TQM emphasizes customer satisfaction, employee involvement, and continuous quality improvement. Each of these must be used together in order for the application to work effectively (Crosby, 1979, 1984, 1989; Deming, 1986, 1994; Feigenbaum, 1991;Juran, 1988). Thus, EI efforts may be apart of a TQM system or may stand alone. However, the concepts are not interchangeable. According to Mohrman et al.: although both [EI and TQM] stress employee involvement as well as training and skills development, there are some key differences between them: The TQM literature attends more to work process and customer outcomes. The employee involvement literature emphasizes design of the work and business units for fuller business involvement and employee motivation. In addition, employee involvement emphasizes making the employee a stakeholder in business performance through rewards systems such as gain-sharing and through business education (1996: 6). Therefore, while EI may stand-alone, an organization may have a more fully developed quality system if it implements a TQM program that expressly incorporates a complete EI effort (Hua et al., 2000). Hence, it is important to determine what factors within a TQM program affect developing EI. Research suggests that four key elements of TQM programs affect EI. First, management support has been repeatedly stressed as essential to the development of all aspects of TQM (Deming, 1986; Flynn et at., 1994; Juran, 1988; Saraph et al., 1989) and in particular to the development of EI (Fenton-O'Creevy, 1998; Silos, 1999). Second, training stands out in both the TQM literature (Cartin, 1993; Hunt, 1992; Osland, 1997) and EI literature as crucial in the skill building necessary for participative workers (Leitch et al., 1995; Silos, 1999). Third, the research suggests teamwork may play a pivotal role in establishing quality (Harris, 1992; Magjuka and Baldwin, 1991) and developing EI (Leitch et al., 1995; Silos, 1999). It appears teamwork acts as a platform supported by management and training (Cohen and Bailey, 1997; Orsburn et al., 1990) from which employees interact and enhance EI performance (Leitch et at., 1995; Silos, 1999; Vanriper et al., 1995). Fourth, rewards have been cited as essential to TQM programs (Bowen and Lawler, 1992; Deadrick and Gardner, 2000) and, as stated earlier, are a key component of EI (Fenton-O'Creevy, 1998; Mohrman et al.; 1996). Interestingly, recent research confirms that these four elements are critical factors in EI development within a TQM framework. …