Introduction
1.1 Background Of The Study
The concept of quality has existed for many years, though it’s meaning has changed and evolved over time. In the early twentieth century, quality management meant inspecting products to ensure that they met specifications. In the 1940s, during World War II, quality became more statistical in nature. Statistical sampling techniques were used to evaluate quality, and quality control charts were used to monitor the production process. In the 1960s, with the help of so-called “quality gurus,” the concept took on a broader meaning. Quality began to be viewed as something that encompassed the entire organization, not only the production process. Since all functional were responsible for product quality and all shared the costs of poor quality, quality was seen as a concept that affected the entire organization.
Wilkinson (2008), the meaning of quality for businesses changed dramatically in the late 1970s. Before then, quality was still viewed as something that needed to be inspected and corrected. However, in the 1970s and 1980s many U.S. industries lost market share to foreign competition for examples in the auto industry, manufacturers such as Toyota and Honda became major players. In the consumer goods market, companies such as Toshiba and Sony led the way. These foreign competitors were producing lower-priced products with considerably higher quality.
The term used for today’s new concept of quality is total quality management orTQM. You can see that the old concept is reactive, designed to correct quality problems after they occur.
Employees in a service organization and particularly, those who have frequent contacts with the customer usually serve as representatives of both the organization and their products or services to the customer at contact point. The quality of the service and the satisfaction the customer may derive will be an assessment of the entire service experience.
Employees who are empowered in an organization can either portray a positive or negative picture to the customers. Considering that, a satisfied customer and employee are of important value to the organization; it therefore, becomes the duty of the management to put in place a system that would ultimately generate either satisfaction, or dissatisfaction from their customers and employees.
Since the employees have a major role to play in determining, whether a customer would enjoy the experience or turn to their competitors for better solutions.
This according to Baruch (1998), forces organizations to re-think their strategy” because as Zeithaml (2006) points out, companies today recognize that they can compete more effectively by distinguishing themselves with respect to service quality and improved customer satisfaction.
Developments in clinical procedures, technologies, laws have called for hospitals to search for new strategies and structures. Decreasing markets, increasing demands, and changed customer attitudes, regulations, as well as the growing global competition in recent years, make up the causes of change in the markets hospitals are competing on.
Product and service quality are ranked high, private and public companies providing quality certificates and total quality management deriving from this development. Wilkinson (1998). Others have expressed the quality development asthe end of mass and the start of a new production paradigm, based upon flexible specialization Piore and Sabel (1984). In view of the prevailing trend, increased service quality and a higher degree of liability towards customers no longer remain a mere possibility but are essential if market shares are to be retained and further developed.
According to Oakland (1993), quality management is driven by the competitive environment and is universal for all types of organizations:” Whatever type of organizations you are working in
− a hospital, universities, bank, insurance company, airline company, students, or whatever company you are working in − competition is common:Competition among customers, resources etc. Very few organizations do not see quality as a most important element in the battle for competitive advantages.”
The management interest in quality is not new but using quality as a key element in the battle for competitive advantages is of recent date. Oakland (1989)claims that after the industrial revolution, and the computer revolution in the beginning of the 1980’s, we are now in the midst of a quality revolution. Surveys conducted by various organizations have revealed an increase in quality movements. These include the movement best known as total quality management;this has been widely acknowledged as a major innovation in management theory. The approach to or the philosophy of total quality management is, however, not obvious.Even Deming acknowledged that he did not know what it meant precisely Boje (1993). There are a number of reasons for this ambiguity. The first problem is todefine the concept quality. Secondly, the large variation in activities.
