Recognising quality to be a key focus for competitiveness, Total Quality Management (TQM) was established and used in developed countries as a new philosophy for managing organisations. However, TQM in developing countries has received little attention and little research has been conducted into the successful implementation of TQM systems in these countries. The research described in this thesis assesses the adoption of TQM factors in the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) sector in Jordan and identifies the main impediments to successful adoption. In addition, this research explores the impact of TQM implementation on improving competitiveness and the role of environmental factors (government policy and social culture) in encouraging the implementation and sustainability of TQM in the Jordanian ICT sector. Both questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were employed to fulfil the study objectives. The questionnaire aimed to investigate the implementation of TQM in the ICT sector, while, semi-structured interviews with General and TQM managers aimed to gain an understanding of themes which had emerged from the questionnaire. In order to fully understand company performance, customers of the ten largest companies in the Jordanian ICT sector were also interviewed. Analysis of the data identified three potential impediments to the successful implementation of TQM. These impediments being; the internal cultural characteristics of organisations, the level of employee empowerment and the degree of continuous improvement that takes place. The results also indicate the critical impact that successful TQM implementation has on improving company competitiveness. The results also show the success of government reward policy, government policy identifying quality performance levels of organisations and the national education system as the source of qualified staff. These are seen as encouraging and supporting TQM implementation. Conversely, governmental policy towards taxation and new licences, bureaucracy and customer perspective regarding quality which gives a priority to price rather than quality as the discouraging factor. The research findings have enabled the development of a model to support TQM implementation within the Jordanian ICT sector. The study has made an original contribution to the academic and practical knowledge of quality management. This is an important first exploratory empirical study of TQM implementation in the ICT sector in Jordan. Some recommendations for further research have been derived from this research.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:515939 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Twaissi, Naseem M. M. |
| Contributors | Worsdale, Graham ; Rollins, Ralph |
| Publisher | University of Huddersfield |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/5010/ |
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