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Corporate culture : a potential hurdle to total quality management

M.Com. / "Once in a generation, perhaps, something happens that profoundly changes the world and how we look at it. Business is no different. From time to time, someone develops a new way of operation that spreads from industry to industry. Those who adopt and adapt, prosper: those who do not, disappear. Well-known examples of such processes include the adoption of the factory system in the 18th century and the assembly line in the 20th century. Without quest ion, Total Quality Management (TQM) is an innovation on this scale" (Gilks, 1990:17-20}. Since the time of the Industrial Revolution in the late eighteenth century, countries within the Western world have regarded themselves as being the experts in most fields of Industry and specific~lly mass production. Although it was thought at first that increasing mechanization would lessen industry's dependence on human labour, this was often not the case with labour productivity being found to be crucial to the overall productivity of manufacturing concerns. Increasingly ingly there was a search for answers on how to optimally utilize the Human Resource with the aim of achieving higher productivity (Sperotto, 1991 :27-33). Enderle (1992:13) writes that with more and more research being undertaken and published about this field, a new management science was established: Organizational behaviour and structuring, as well as job design. Its main objective was to find out more about human psychological needs and aspirations and how this information would be put to use in the wordplay. This particular school of thought is known as the "scientific management" or 'socio-technical" approach.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:uj/uj:10823
Date23 April 2014
CreatorsTeifel, Harry Hans Hein
Source SetsSouth African National ETD Portal
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
RightsUniversity of Johannesburg

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