Quality Management In Micro Firms Myth Or Reality A Maltese Micro Manufacturing Firm Under Review

Manufacturing companies including a local micro-enterprise - Quality Postform Ltd are persistently facing competitive pressures as a consequence of customers demanding higher quality products. The emergence of Quality Management has been attributed by many researchers and Quality Gurus including Phil Crosby as a strategic imperative for typical organisations to survive within a highly competitive environment. Nevertheless, research carried out throughout the past years is relatively restricted regarding the practicality of micro-manufacturing firms in implementing Crosby’s Quality Improvement Programme, which is claimed to be highly beneficial in typical situations. This dissertation seeks to investigate this scenario from both a descriptive and critical perspective towards Quality Postform Ltd. The research provides a critical evaluation of the academic contributions towards the quality management concept. Distinct disputed viewpoints have been identified focusing on Crosby’s 14-Step Quality Improvement Programme. From one end of the spectrum, supporters uphold that claimed benefits have been acknowledged. Alternatively, others sustain that in essence a Quality Improvement Programme is counter-productive in terms of its application within Small and Medium sized Enterprises. However the researcher has identified four key pre-requisites in order for micro-firms to effectively implement Crosby’s programme. These include: management commitment, the acknowledgement of a quality problem, the organisation’s readiness to embrace change together with the suppliers’ readiness to support the quality programme. The methodology applied to assess the presence of these four pre-requisites at QPL was to compile primary, qualitative data through one-to-one / face-to-face interviews with key management officials. This approach is justified due to the absence of formalised documentation and as a result, it is imperative to assess that historical data on Quality Systems is seriously lacking at QPL. The field research outcome reveals that QPL’s management is experiencing serious doubts regarding the feasibility and practicality of the program’s implementation within a micro-manufacturing firm. This is the case primarily whenever the latter is facing limited financial and human resource capabilities such as at QPL. The research findings disclose that none of the four pre-requisites are present within this micro-firm. Moreover it confirms the scepticism on the part of [...]

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 80, University of Leicester, course: Master of Business Management - Quality Management, language: English, abstract: Executive Summary Manufacturing companies including a local micro-enterprise - Quality Postform Ltd are persistently facing competitive pressures as a consequence of customers demanding higher quality products. The emergence of Quality Management has been attributed by many researchers and Quality Gurus including Phil Crosby as a strategic imperative for typical organisations to survive within a highly competitive environment. Nevertheless, research carried out throughout the past years is relatively restricted regarding the practicality of micro-manufacturing firms in implementing Crosby’s Quality Improvement Programme, which is claimed to be highly beneficial in typical situations. This dissertation seeks to investigate this scenario from both a descriptive and critical perspective towards Quality Postform Ltd. The research provides a critical evaluation of the academic contributions towards the quality management concept. Distinct disputed viewpoints have been identified focusing on Crosby’s 14-Step Quality Improvement Programme. From one end of the spectrum, supporters uphold that claimed benefits have been acknowledged. Alternatively, others sustain that in essence a Quality Improvement Programme is counter-productive in terms of its application within Small and Medium sized Enterprises. However the researcher has identified four key pre-requisites in order for micro-firms to effectively implement Crosby’s programme. These include: management commitment, the acknowledgement of a quality problem, the organisation’s readiness to embrace change together with the suppliers’ readiness to support the quality programme. The methodology applied to assess the presence of these four pre-requisites at QPL was to compile primary, qualitative data through one-to-one / face-to-face interviews with key management officials. This approach is justified due to the absence of formalised documentation and as a result, it is imperative to assess that historical data on Quality Systems is seriously lacking at QPL. The field research outcome reveals that QPL’s management is experiencing serious doubts regarding the feasibility and practicality of the program’s implementation within a micro-manufacturing firm. This is the case primarily whenever the latter is facing limited financial and human resource capabilities such as at QPL. The research findings disclose that none of the four pre-requisites are present within this micro-firm. [...]

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: Total Quality Management (TQM) has already made its mark in history. Big players in major industries, such as Ford and Siemens, have already aligned their business and production processes to this holistic management concept. Over the past three decades there are more medium-sized companies applying TQM principles to their business. Quality has been important in helping companies gaining a competitive edge in globalized markets. TQM with its extensive set of methods aims to embed quality awareness among all departments of a company where work affects the quality of the products. There are thousands of articles and books written on how large and medium sized companies have successfully implemented of TQM. An extensive literature review and interviews of experts and owners of very small businesses (micro-businesses) indicate that this is the only industry where TQM systems have not yet been implemented. Although micro-businesses are pressured by their customers to achieve high levels of quality in their products, there is not enough research that addresses the issues of implementing TQM practices for micro-businesses. Scientific literature does not provide answers to crucial questions such as: - What methods of quality management are currently being in use in micro-businesses? - How could a TQM system be tailored to meet the needs in a micro-business environment? This thesis is part of a large-scale field study that recently has been launched by the Howe School of Technology Management at Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. The study aims to reveal answers to the questions listed above. This thesis forms the foundation for the subsequent field study. The main goals is to deploy a systematic TQM framework for micro-businesses that will be help micro-businesses understand how the quality management culture has an impact on a company s success. Additionally, this thesis aims to develop a questionnaire that will examine the validity of the framework and serve as basis for the field study. The focus is on very small manufacturers. First breakthroughs in quality management have been taken place in this industry. Thus we can dispose of more than 100 years of research results in this field. Furthermore it is the manufacturer who is used to the first-movers role in new quality management models another good reason for choosing this industry. Layout of This Thesis: After an exposure of the problem in [...]

Master's Thesis from the year 2012 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 80, University of Leicester, course: Master of Business Management - Quality Management, language: English, abstract: Executive Summary Manufacturing companies including a local micro-enterprise - Quality Postform Ltd are persistently facing competitive pressures as a consequence of customers demanding higher quality products. The emergence of Quality Management has been attributed by many researchers and Quality Gurus including Phil Crosby as a strategic imperative for typical organisations to survive within a highly competitive environment. Nevertheless, research carried out throughout the past years is relatively restricted regarding the practicality of micro-manufacturing firms in implementing Crosby's Quality Improvement Programme, which is claimed to be highly beneficial in typical situations. This dissertation seeks to investigate this scenario from both a descriptive and critical perspective towards Quality Postform Ltd. The research provides a critical evaluation of the academic contributions towards the quality management concept. Distinct disputed viewpoints have been identified focusing on Crosby's 14-Step Quality Improvement Programme. From one end of the spectrum, supporters uphold that claimed benefits have been acknowledged. Alternatively, others sustain that in essence a Quality Improvement Programme is counter-productive in terms of its application within Small and Medium sized Enterprises. However the researcher has identified four key pre-requisites in order for micro-firms to effectively implement Crosby's programme. These include: management commitment, the acknowledgement of a quality problem, the organisation's readiness to embrace change together with the suppliers' readiness to support the quality programme. The methodology applied to assess the presence of these four pre-requisites at QPL was to compile primar

This book responds to the challenge of providing a comprehensive account of quality systems for private sector development: what works and what doesnt on the ground, and why. This volume provides a thorough analysis of the diversity of institutions, linkages, and arrangements involved in quality systems, identifying success factors in countries quality strategies. It explains why quality and standards matter for export growth, for productivity, for industrial upgrading, and for diffusion of innovation, all central ingredients in improving economic growth and generating real gains in poverty reduction. It provides a detailed blue print for implementing effective National Quality Systems. Quality and Standards Matter is a valuable tool for policymakers confronted with the challenges of building trade competitiveness in the new global economy.

The majority of businesses throughout the world are small firms and they play a crucial role in the economic growth of the world's economies. The authors offer a conceptual framework supported by their own original case study data to explain how and why a small firm should approach strategic planning.

This volume uses the study of firm dynamics to investigate the factors preventing faster productivity growth in Latin America and the Caribbean, pushing past the limits of traditional macroeconomic analyses. Each chapter is dedicated to an examination of a different factor affecting firm productivity - innovation, ICT usage, on-the-job-training, firm age, access to credit, and international linkages - highlighting the differences in firm characteristics, behaviors, and strategies. By showcasing this remarkable heterogeneity, this collection challenges regional policymakers to look beyond one-size-fits-all solutions and create balanced policy mixes tailored to distinct firm needs. This book is open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO license.

“One of the most profound and illuminating studies of this century to have been published in recent decades.”—John Gray, New York Times Book Review Hailed as “a magisterial critique of top-down social planning” by the New York Times, this essential work analyzes disasters from Russia to Tanzania to uncover why states so often fail—sometimes catastrophically—in grand efforts to engineer their society or their environment, and uncovers the conditions common to all such planning disasters. “Beautifully written, this book calls into sharp relief the nature of the world we now inhabit.”—New Yorker “A tour de force.”— Charles Tilly, Columbia University

This paper studies the macroeconomic effect and underlying firm-level transmission channels of a reduction in business entry costs. We provide novel evidence on the response of firms' entry, exit, and employment decisions. To do so, we use as a natural experiment a reform in Portugal that reduced entry time and costs. Using the staggered implementation of the policy across the Portuguese municipalities, we find that the reform increased local entry and employment by, respectively, 25% and 4.8% per year in its first four years of implementation. Moreover, around 60% of the increase in employment came from incumbent firms expanding their size, with most of the rise occurring among the most productive firms. Standard models of firm dynamics, which assume a constant elasticity of substitution, are inconsistent with the expansionary and heterogeneous response across incumbent firms. We show that in a model with heterogeneous firms and variable markups the most productive firms face a lower demand elasticity and expand their employment in response to increased entry.