Beliefs and attitudes of middle managers towards quality programs in their organisations
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2000
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This overall objective of this research was to identify factors that were important in
forming middle managers' attitudes toward quality and quality programs in their
organisations. An underlying assumption of the research, supported by the literature, was
that a middle manager's attitude toward his/her quality program could be an important
indicator of behaviour toward the program e.g. resistance, willingness to be involved.
Reviews of the literature on middle management, quality, attitude measurement and
research more specifically related to the research topic was undertaken. The work of
Ajzen (1988) was particularly useful in devising an overall theoretical framework for the
research . A number of hypotheses related to the overall research question were
formulated.
Twenty-one organisations agreed to participate in the research. These all had a quality
program. Some of the organisations were quite advanced in quality, a number had won
Australian Quality Awards, others were much less advanced. Organisations were drawn
from manufacturing and services in both private and public sectors. Data was collected in
two main ways. Firstly, a questionnaire was designed, piloted and distributed to
approximately 1100 middle managers in participating organisations. The response rate
was approximately 50%. Secondly, in depth interviews were carried out with middle
managers, senior managers and quality managers in a number of the participating
organisations.
The results generally confirm the importance of the middle management group as key to
the success of a quality program. Middle managers across all of the participating
organisations generally believed that the TQM approach to management was an effective
one. Their views on the effectiveness of IS09000 were less positive. Middle managers
generally believed that the quality programs were more likely to benefit their organisations
rather than to directly benefit themselves, although quality programs did provide some
opportunities for some middle managers. Middle managers generally believed that their
quality programs provided both operational and strategic benefit for their organisations.
Paradoxically, a widely held belief among middle managers was that quality programs did
not reduce short term thinking and over-reacting to short term goals.
Positive attitudes to quality in the organisation were associated particularly with the values
and beliefs that middle managers held regarding: a) program support from top
management, from their direct boss and from their colleagues; b) a range of program
outcomes for the organisation and c) a range of program outcomes related to the individual
middle manager. For middle managers actively involved in their organisations quality
program the clarity of their program role was positively related to program attitudes.
Training/education in quality was also significantly related to some beliefs and attitudes
towards quality and quality programs. Middle managers generally believed that quality
programs involved a significant increase in paper work and bureaucracy. However this
was not a significant influence on their attitudes toward quality in their organisations. An
important finding was that for a wide range of beliefs and attitudes related to quality no
significant differences were found between the types of jobs held by middle managers.
An exception was the quality specialist group who generally had significantly more
positive attitudes and beliefs about quality and their quality programs than did other job
categories.
Middle managers seemed relatively at ease with most of the changes that were taking
place as part of their programs. In particular they had relatively positive views on
devolution of responsibility to lower level employees. Middle managers also seemed
relatively at ease with their own performance being more tightly monitored with
program implementation. The research supported the more optimistic view of middle
Management that has been reported recently (e.g. Fenton-O'Creevy 1998). The notion
of the middle management still had currency in all of the organisations participating in
the research despite the many structural changes that had taken place.
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