During the 2010 fall semester, students will periodically post about anything “Quality Management”. We are using the text Quality Management: Creating and Sustaining an Effective Organization (2nd Edition) by Donna C.S. Summers, Ph.D. Some of the students have co-op’d, most have had a part time jobs or participated in community volunteer work this past summer or year. This is their reference point, their initial perception about organizations.
The dialog our first week of class introduced concepts of an “effective organization” – what this kind of organization looks like, the benefits from creating an effective organization, why organizations pursue excellence, for example. Think about an organization as “a compilation of a wide variety of activities. Any one or group of those activities can be world-class operationally, but if the other activities within the firm are performing at a suboptimal level, then the organization as a whole is not effective.” [pg 7]
Here’s a thought: If an organization misses a customer’s order due date, was this because the employee was trying to make a mistake, or the result of poor systems within the organization?
Our first assignment is to think about a situation where you experienced or observed a system failure and write about how that failure relates to one factor that affects organizational success. A factor could be the company’s culture, effective leadership, employee motivation, teamwork, competitive position, or technology; just 6 examples out of 23 factors grouped under Organizational, People, or Environmental categories from page 8 in the text (figure 1.3).
Student examples will be posted after the assignments are turned in the first part of the upcoming week!
By Sandy Feola
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