BUILDING QUALITY CULTURE [TQM] THROUGH MARKET – ORIENTED STRATEGIC PLANNING
Abstract
Modern managers, perhaps more than any other generation of managers, face the challenge of developing and maintaining high quality in the goods or services they offer the market place. High quality products are defined as goods or services that customers rate as being excellent. Most management theorists and practising managers agree that if an organisation is to be successful in the national and international business world of today, it must offer high-quality goods or services to its customers. The maintenance of high-quality products has grown from an issue pertinent to the future success of individual business enterprises to an issue pertinent to the economic success of Nigeria as a whole. Indeed, in the communique of a recent national seminar on National Economic Reconstruction -The Total Quality Management Concept, organised by Times Ventures Limited in collaboration with the National Economic Reconstruction Fund (NERFUND), it was stated unambiguously that “the adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM), nationwide, constitutes a sure recipe for achieving sustainable economic development and rapid modernisation. It submitted that “TQM as a philosophy of managerial excellence and industrial commitment to high standards, holds the key to the resuscitation of Nigeria’s ailing parastatals and poorly run bureaucracies”. In this period of great change and flux in moral values in Nigeria, what organisations need is a reference point to survive. Change without a constant reference point is not a comfortable human situation and a realistic product state. Any business strategy, to be capable of sustained success, must be grounded in competitive advantage. A company gains competitive advantage when its position gives an edge in coping with competitive forces and in attracting buyers. Many different positioning advantages exist: making the highest-quality product on the market, providing customer service superior to rivals, being recognised as a low-price seller, having a product that does the best job performing a particular function, being in the best gepgraphical location, making a more reliable and longer-lasting product, and offering the most value for the money (a combination of good quality, good service, and acceptable price). Whichever positioning strategy a company pursues, in order to achieve competitive advantage, a viable number of customers must end up buying the firm’s product because of the “Superior Value” they perceived it has. The modern concept of ‘quality is a philosophy which aims continually to satisfy customer requirements. The term ‘requirements’ covers all aspects of customer relationships – not the product alone. Acceptance of this philosophy is long overdue in Nigeria. An obvious truth is that if a customer perceives a product or seh/ice as being quality, it becomes more attractive. Traditional views on quality were generally restricted to the product being manufactured to a specification which was monitoijed by ‘quality control’. Modern approaches to quality absorb the whole organisatiop in a quality culture which aims to provide the customer with a product or service of highest quality consistent with price. In a globally competitive world, successful companies are increasingly market driven which means that everyone in the organisation needs to understand how to determine customer needs and how to fill them both in terms of the products it makes and the service it provides. Market orientation is a technique that concentrates on customers wants and is often called the marketing concept. The total organisation is geared up} to marketing and the customer forms the basis for corporate strategic planning. Putting the customer first has always been the prime consideration for marketing department. Extending this philosophy to corporate level where everyone is committed to this apprc-ach demands a major change in attitudes for many. The lead must come from the lop and every individual have a strong role to play in planning based upon marketing Strategies and forecasting. Indeed, a recent research evidence gathered in response td the question; “what makes a company excellent?”, revealed that the Company’s (total) Employees are committed to creating satisfied customers. And a corollary of this fact is that, excellent companies know how to adapt and responded to a continuously changing market place. In other words, they practice the art of “market-oriented strategic planning”. In today’s complex world of business, market-oriented strategib planning is indispensable to effective management. A number of forces at the present time reinforces this fact; companies are growing larger and becoming mor^ complex to manager; competition is becoming more intense; the threats as well as the opportunities in the evolving environment seemingly are getting more difficult to foresee; product research and development lead-times and costs are growing while product life cycles are shortening et-cetra, et-cetra. Business enterprises must therefore be skilled in identifying major problems that will appear in the future and in taking prc-mpt action to deal with them. Business organisations must engage in better corporate strategic planning. Given the turbulent and massively changing (or what Philip Koiler called the succession of shock wave in the: business environment, a new management planning process that would keep firms healthy inspite of upsets occurring in any of their businesses or product-line is called for. It is a fact that managers in most organisations spend significant arrlounts of time and effort on strategic planning. However, it is believed that if designed properly, strategic planning can play an important role in establishing and maintaining product quality. This thesis has therefore examined the principal managerial tasks associated with building quality (culture) and offered perspectives on how market-driven (oriented) forms should act to achieve this through instructive methods of crafting a well-conceived strategy and then successfully executing it. And as you set out to discover the hidden treasure in this thesis, let me just say a little bon appetit.
TABLE OF CONTENT
Title page- – – – – – – – – i
Approval page – – – – – – – -ii
Dedication – – – – – – – – -iii
Acknowledgement – – – – – – – -iv
Abstract – – – – – – – – – -v
Table of content – – – – – – – -vi
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION – – – – – – – -1
1.0 Background of the study – – – – -1
1.1 Statement of the problem – – – – -5
1.2 Purpose of the study – – – – – -6
1.3 Significance of the study – – – – -8
1.4 Research questions – – – – – -9
1.5 Scope of the study – – – – – – -10
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW – – – – – – -11
CHAPTER THREE
Research methodology – – – – – – -39
Design of study – – – – – – – -40
CHAPTER FOUR
Presentation, analysis and interpretation of data – -48
CHAPTER FIVE
Summary of findings – – – – – – -60
Conclusion – – – – – – – – -61
Recommendations – – – – – – – -62
Suggestions for further research – – – – -64
References – – – – – – – – -65
Appendix I – – – – — – – – -68
Questionnaire. – – – – – – – -69
BUILDING QUALITY CULTURE [TQM] THROUGH MARKET – ORIENTED STRATEGIC PLANNING
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