Integrating total quality management and business process re-engineering: Is it enough?

In the last few decades of the twentieth century, knowledge has accumulated, innovations have been occurring at an unprecedented rate, competition for technology and markets has intensi® ed, and customers have become more educated and more demanding than ever. This has forced organizations world-wide to set up new methods of dealing within the context of laws and standards that require a completely overhauled way of organizational thinking and behaviour. In 1998, a survey of the leading UK organizations was undertaken by the authors to assess the views and practices regarding future performance excellence. The survey revealed that 96.6% of senior managers who responded agreed that change has become the foremost business issue of our day. Eighty point three per cent of the respondents also agreed that success today requires a completely overhauled way of organizational thinking and behaviour. Clearly, businesses have realized that there is a need to restructure their business practices and become more customer-focused. However, they do not necessarily know how and what to change, to achieve improvements in productivity and performance (Love & Gunasekaran, 1997). In the last decade, two main organizational development models dominated the organizational world, namely, total quality management (TQM) and business process re-engineering (BPR). Organizations have used either or both to achieve the required change and ensure success.