The period
between 1985 to 2009 has experienced an unprecedented change in all major
economics.
These changes in the world have been well documented and embraced, the wide
spread adoption of information technologies, deregulation of both product and
labour market, decline of heavy manufacturing and ascendancy of service
industries and growing global competition for provision of goods and services,
and the present economic meltdown have led organizations to provide better ways
of compensating employees as to enhance their productivity.
The continuous
change in product life cycle and service markets combined with tightening
quality demands require employers to seek more efficient and flexible means of
production (Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2005).
Partly, in
response to these economic demands and partly as a result of other societal
shifts, there have been uniform changes in the composition and activities of
the work force. A further shift is that the labour force is becoming
increasingly qualified, as older non-qualified staff pave way to growing rank
of well-educated newcomers to the labour market (Wolf 2002).
Sequel to the
above scenario organizations now resort to adoption of different types of
employees participatory practices (job design), as a route to improve
organization performance.
Research has
shown that organizational performance may be improved through the following
participatory methods besides financial participations.
§
Quality circle
(QC)
§
Team-working (TW)
§
Self-Managed Team (SMT)
§
Quality of work life (QWL)
§
Total Quality Management (TQM)
Quality
Circles: these are defined as a work group of 8 to 10 employees and supervisors
who have a shared area of responsibility and who meet regularly-typically once
a week, on company time and on company premises-to discuss their quality
problems, investigate causes of problems, recommend solutions, and take
corrective actions (Robbins and Judge 2007).
Mullins (2007)
defined quality circle as: “ a group of people within an organization who meet
on a regular basis to identify, analyze and solve problems relating to qualify,
productivity, or other problems aspects of day-to-day working arrangements
using problems-solving techniques”.
Although
quality circle originated in America, they were exported to Japan where it
thrives better. The brain behind quality circle is to encourage employees’
participation and to improve problem solving machinery of the organization.
One of the
views in favour of quality circle is that it leads to acquisition of new skills
and encourages team work. It is an attempt in the part of management to
encourage people not only to identify with quality of their own work, but also
with the managerial objectives of better quality and increased efficiency
throughout the organization.
In agreement
with the above view, Marchington (2001:235)
revealed that:
The practices of QCs have several objectives, such
as
to increase the stock of ideas within an organization
to
encourage co-operative relations of work and to
legitimize
change. These practices are predicated on
the
assumption that employees are recognized as a
major
source of competitive advantage for organizations,
a
source whose ideas have been ignored in the past or
who
have been told that “they are not paid to think”.
Quality
circles therefore is not only a potential source of useful ideals for improving systems and
saving costs, they also give people a welcome opportunity to contribute their
thoughts and experience, in such a way that a general positive impact on
employees attitude should thus result.
Apart from
quality circle, another way to enhanced employees performance and also motivate
them intrinsically, is through “team-working”, Kincki and Willaims (2003)
defined a team as “a small group of people with complementary skill, who are
committed to a common
purpose,
performance goals, and approach for which they hold themselves mutually
accountable”.
Team working
creates room for greater employee participation, and has as such turned out to
be a corner stone at the heart of many organization’ responses to competitive
pressure (Geory, 1995).
However, if a
team is not properly checkmated, it may lead to the production of inferior
goods, and also lead some of the resourceful members of the group to become
boisterous of their achievement(s).
Team working
helps to reduce cost, to support this, a study by Lawler (1996) revealed that
“Boeing used work to develop its latest commercial jetliner, the 777, at costs
that were far less than would have been the case with its traditional
management techniques”. Team work is a direct descendant of the concept of
autonomous working groups. It may be characterized as a form of worker control,
even though it operates within heavily prescribed limits.
§
Another method of improving employee
productivity through intrinsic method or job design is through “self-managed
teams”, a self-managed team is a group of workers who are given administrative
oversight for their task domens. It involves delegated activities like
planning, scheduling, monitoring and staffing.
§
The main goals of self-managed teams are to
increase productivity and employee quality of work life. Self-managed team has
narrowed the gap between the manager and the managed, as employees are
delegated greater authority and granted increased autonomy. The team manages
themselves without any formal supervision. A self-managed team requires both
technical and organizational redesigned, to integrate the team into the
organizational structure.
According to
Armstrong (1999:333):
The advocates of self-managed teams or autonomous
work group claim that this
approach
offers a more comprehensive view
of organizations, than the rather
simplistic
individual motivation theories that
underpin job rotation, enlargement
and
enrichment. Be that as it may, the strength
of this system is that it does not
take
account of the social or group factors and
the technology as well as the individual motivation.
Companies that
have been integrating self-managed team into their plan include Procter & Gamble Gummins Engine Company, General
Motors, Westing House Electric Corporation, TRW Inc., GTE, Sherwin – Williams
Company, AT & T, Boeing, Unisys, and IBM. These companies claim that the
team can increase productivity by 30-50 percent (Cynthia et: al, 2007)
A study of
self – managed teams by Cordery, (1996) revealed
that “sometimes, but not always, autonomous work teams result in increased
quality and productivity”.
However, for a
self-managed team to succeed, the company must loosen control systems remove
bureaucratic procedures, and provide a great deal of team training. It must
also assure that near-continuous information is available on targets and
relevant current performance i.e. output, quality, cost, waste etc.
Meanwhile,
self –managed teams have their own flaw, one of which is that, if it is not
properly managed or controlled, may lead to laissesez-faire leadership, this
itself posses a major challenged for traditional managers, as they give up
their “bossy” management style.
In order to
make the self-managed team effective, the team members must be trained or
developed to assume greater responsibilities in planning team work, and problem
solving (Nickels et:al,1999).
Quality of
Working Life (QWL): This is another way of which employee’s performance could
be enhanced. The team refers to the extent to which employees’ personal need
are met through their work. One’s quality of work life improves as one’s work
meets more and more personal needs, such as security, responsibility and
self-esteem. (Hackman & Sutle,
1977).
Making work
more rewarding, reducing employee’s anxieties, encouraging more participation
in decisions relating to work and employment and team-building are all examples
of QWL approaches. There are strong indications that improvements in QWL
favourably affect organizational performance, and enables companies to compete
in global environment. The Japanese, for examples, are ordent supporters of QWL
and designed work around teams
and a strong
company culture. The result is not only higher productivity but lower
absenteeism and labour turnover.
Quality of
working life consciously and continually aiming to improve the quality of
working life. This involves increasing the sense of satisfaction people obtain
from their work, by so far as possible, reduces monotony, increasing variety,
autonomy, responsibility, and avoiding placing people under too much stress (Armstrong,
2006).
Another
fastest growing productivity improvement programme is the “total quality
management” (TQM). This is an organization-wide approach that focuses on the
quality of all the processes that lead to the final product or service.
If total
quality management must succeed, it requires the support of the top management
and the belief that quality is a key part of every employee’s job. Another
facet of TQM is its customer focus in the process of defining and improving
quality. It is part of employee’s empowerment, and emphasizes a team
orientation.
Monday
et:al;(1999) defined the concept as: “a top management philosophy that emphasis
the continuous improvement of the process that result in goods or service”.
Total Quality
Management ideas began to gain increasing acceptance in the United States in
the mid-1980s. By 1993, 76 percent of Fortune 1000 firms had adopted the
practice of TQM for at least part of their work force. By 1997, 57 percent of
representative sample of establishments in the United States said they had
adopted TQM for at least half of their work force. Total quality management
first become popular in manufacturing organization, but it has also been widely
adopted in service setting (Lawler III et:al, 1995 and Partlow 1996).
However, in
Nigeria not many are practicing the Total Quality Management principles. In
Japan, it is one of the major management practices that make Japanese companies
what they are but one of the fears by management is that when employees know
much of the organizational secrets, they usurp the powers of management. An
integral part of a total quality approach is the Japanese concept of “Kaizen”
which literally means improvement”.
The Chartered
Management Institute of USA (2005:30) defined Total quality management thus;
TQM is a way of managing which gives
everyone
in
the organization responsibility for delivering
quality
to the final customer, quality being described
as
“fairness for purposes” or as “delighting the
customer”.
TQM views each task in the organization
as
fundamentally a process which is in a customer/
supplier
relationship with the next process. The aim
at
each stage is to define and meet the customer’s
requirements
with the aim of maximizing the
satisfaction
of the final customer at the lowest possible
costs.
Although the
specific programmes may vary, they usually requires a careful analysis of
customers’ need, an assessment of the degree to which these needs are carefully
meet and plan to fulfill the possible gap between the current and the desired
situation. (Heinz and Harold, 2005).