Leadership to Improve Quality within an Organization

veryone wants quality; however, quality means different things to different people.Some people view it from a consumer's point of view, while others view it from a supplier's.In essence, the perception of quality is one that meets the needs of the person seeking it.Once quality has been defined, management needs to take three steps to ensure the successful implementation and maintenance of their quality process.Committing to, investing in, and maintaining a quality process directly involving the employees within an organization will assist in leading to a successful implementation.This paper establishes employee empowerment, training personnel on quality processes, and instilling core values as solid foundations for successful quality within an organization.By comparing cultural practices and methodologies of Americans and Japanese, emphasizing the importance of training management and employees, and creating responsibility and trust as core values, the authors explore steps that create a successful organization.In essence, everything falls back on strong leadershipinordertoattainqualitywithinanorganization.Many people believe that in order to achieve quality, one needs to invest a lot of time, money, and effort.Although initially this theory holds some truth, in the long run, leadership within the organization plays a more important role in achieving and maintaining quality.Quality does not evolve overnight.Peopleneedtodedicatethemselvesandtheircompanies to having quality practices and policies in order to gain a reputation of delivering quality.The three main keys to attaining sustainable quality within the organization include: 1 motivating employees through empowerment to dedicate them-selves to their work; 2 investing time and money in training and developing employees into leaders; and 3 reinforcing core values in employees to maintain quality practices.Quality can be achieved if management and workers believe in achievingsuccessfulleadershipwithintheorganization. OBJECTIVENumerous articles have been written on processes and procedures that affect quality.Currently, many organizations, especially those in the federal government, have placed heavy emphasis on improving quality.Unfortunately, some people generally believe that introducing an established quality process in an organization will miraculously work without any resistance and difficulty.In reality, management experiences resistance from their employees if they perceive that quality improvement processes have been forced upon them.Many of these changes involve quality processes successfully implemented by the Japanese.However, due to the differences of Japanese and American cultures, implementation of established Japanese quality processes may not have the same effects on American organizations.This paper explores several issues that need to be addressed before implementing quality processes in an organization: By addressing these main issues, it is expected that management can better institute quality changes within the organization.Without fully understanding how to achieve quality, it stands to reason that management cannot successfully implement changes within an organization to attain quality. DEFINITION OF QUALITYFirst off, people need to understand the meaning of quality in order to implement it.Many definitions of quality exist based on the public's perception of products and services.In the U.S. market, many consumers want the most for their money, and producers want to produce goods and services at the most profit for their company, resulting in each individual having their own definition of quality.One person may believe that buying the most expensive product or service means they purchased something with the best quality.Another person may think that purchasing something from a well-known brand or hiring a prominent service provider means they purchased quality.Webster's Third New International Dictionary has several definitions for quality, including: "a degree of excellence;" "a special or distinguishing attribute;" and "something that serves to identify a subject of perception or thought in the respect of which it is considered."Ultimately, when people purchase "quality" items, they buy something that fulfills their perception or need for the good or service.Producers possess different views of quality in comparison to consumers.To producers, everything revolves around making a product or providing a service consumers view as "quality" while keeping costs low.Ball 2006, p. 39 discusses how producers can reach equilibrium between customer satisfaction and company costs using a theory called cost of quality COQ: