This paper presents a guide that will be used in conducting the research later on. It describes the aims of which the research will be intended to attain, the question the research will answer, a brief description of the literature to be used and finally offers the timeline the research is expected to cover. Most importantly, the paper will describe the sample of study and how each will be helpful throughout the research.
Introduction
Total quality management
The principle of total quality management is based on a set of managerial practices practiced within an entity and aimed at ensuring that the entity exhibits consistence in meeting of its customers and if possible exceed it. (Besterfield, et al 2005) Its focus is more oriented towards measurement and control of the process in order to facilitate continuous improvement. Primarily the process improvements are all aimed at enhancing customer satisfaction.
Naturalization and Residency Department
Both legal and illegal matters relating to residency and naturalization of foreign citizens are handled by the Naturalization and residency department. Its customers thus are mostly non-citizens who are either seeking to legitimize their stay in the country which may include permanent residency application, application for naturalization and asylum seekers among others or those arrested on the basis of being in the country illegally.
Relation between leadership and people’s involvement to TQM
An entity’s leadership management and empowerment of employees have often been cited as key principles in TQM. (Crosby, 1979) This is due to their presumed relation to the satisfaction of customers. Previous research has often indicted that there exists a positively oriented correlation between management leadership practices, empowerment of employees and customer/job satisfaction.
Purpose of the study
The study is aimed at critical evaluation of the impact that leadership behavior and empowerment of employees has on the success of a total quality management system in the services sector. This is achieved through the study of its application at the naturalization and residency department hence identification of the strong points that enhance its success and the weak points that could result into the systems failure.
Research questions
To attain its objectives, the study will be guided by several questions. This will include:
- Whether or not the leadership behavior has an impact on employees towards achieving the goals set out by a total quality management system?
- What role leadership has in the establishment of TQM processes?
- The relation between leadership and employee satisfaction?
- The importance of stakeholder involvement in achieving success?
Assumptions of the study. In conducting of this research several assumptions will be made including;
- The results obtained are representative of the service sector as a whole.
- The respondents to questionnaires and interviews will give accurate and reliable responses.
Objectives of the study
The study intends to develop a more insightful understanding of role that leadership and stakeholder involvement has on enhancing the success of total quality management systems in the services sector. This it will a focus in achieving a number of specific objectives. These include:
- Critical evaluation as to whether leadership behavior and stakeholder involvement impacts on total quality management application.
- Critical evaluation of role of leadership in establishment of organizational systems and processes that support TQM at the department of naturalization and residency.
- Critical evaluation as to how the leadership behavior and styles of management impact on employee satisfaction and motivation in service provision.
- Critical evaluation regarding the role of stakeholder involvement to the success of TQM in the department of naturalization and residency.
Literature review
TQM has been cited as the future management strategy. It application has not only bee commended for its wide application, but also for its product/service quality assurance. It quality assurance ensures customer satisfaction both internally and externally through management of people and the processes involved in business operations. Wilkinson in his book notes that motivated stakeholders, coupled with effective leadership applied to TQM results into unimaginable success. (Wilkinson, 1998) In essence such an arrangement results into an outright commitment to quality. In general thus, TQM’s foundations can be said to lie in fundamental management functions which include; management of people, process monitoring and evaluation, and system management.
Stakeholder involvement
The stakeholder include the people who in one way or another affect or are affected by the operations of the entity. They include but are not limited to customers, management, suppliers, and employees. Often stakeholders form the bulk of the quality chain and thus failure on one may inadvertently result into an imminent collapse of the quality chain. Additionally it is worth noting that failure on one system requirement often has multiple and rippling effect that ends up creating problems to other system parts previously unaffected. (Guest, 1987) Based on these assertions it thus follows that there is an attached need for involving various stakeholders in enhancement of TQM success.
Each stakeholder has some attached importance of which an absence or reluctance in offering the same ripples down to affect the whole service system. While a customer’s needs are important and need to be met, this is unachievable if the needs and supply expectations are not met. Basically, an ideal success situation is one where an open partnership relationship exists across all the stakeholders involved.
Leadership
Improving competitiveness, flexibility and efficiency in a way that benefits all the stakeholders is subject to the leadership approach within an entity. (Foti & Hauenstein, 2007) Most firms across the globe are currently adopting a stakeholder approach of leadership as research has not only displayed its success but has additionally revealed that it is a key to increased profits. TQM’s success requires top leadership’s adoption of strategic quality overview and put more focus on prevention rather than problem detection. While such require all stakeholders’ involvement, the top leadership demonstrates commitment towards the same.
Additionally, they are charged with the responsibility of developing and communicating pro-success principles, and strategies to the other stakeholders. These include development of quality policy frameworks in addition to proper implementation plans. Smith states that effective leadership involves development of strategic actions plans that give the organization a success. (Smith & Foti, 1998) This he cites coupled with the TQM approach results into quality service provision hence customer satisfaction.
Research Methodology
Research design
The research will be conducted at the department of naturalization and residency a sample of 2 top managers, 50 employees and 50 customers will be selected. The requirements will include questionnaires, interview schedules, and previous research and literature on the same. This will help in collection of data that will be vital in drawing of conclusions. Once permission is obtained from the relevant authorities the following steps will be taken;
- Interviews will be scheduled with the already identified top managers.
- Questionnaires will be distributed amongst the employees of the naturalization and residency department.
- Questionnaires will be distributed to the already identified customers of the department. Additionally a few selected customers will be subject to interview to get more insightful responses.
- The results obtained will then be classified and those considered invalid disposed while those considered valid used to develop the final paper.
Sampling
While the two top managers to be interviewed will greatly depend on those who will accept to give audience to the researcher, the fifty employees will be randomly selected and those willing be given questionnaires to respond to. Choosing the customers would rather be the most challenging as it would involve anonymous customers being presented with questionnaires as they seek service from the department. Additionally, due to the need to obtain past customer experiences, it would involve requesting the department to provide contacts of anonymous customers.
The anonymously selected customers will then be collected and requested for an interview upon those who accept would be interviewed. The fifty customers would thus fall into two categories; those who would respond to questionnaires and those who would be directly interviewed in the ratio of 5:1.
Methods of data collection
The data collection will take a qualitative approach with the responses to the interviews and questionnaires documented and appropriately analyzed. The data will thus be collected as follows;
- Analysis of documents and reports from the department of naturalization and residency.
- Case study which will include: Interview with managers. Use of survey questionnaires and selected interviews with the customers. Use of questionnaires for the employees
- Additionally, books, journals and other peer reviewed articles will be used in data collection.
Use of questionnaires
The questionnaires will be useful in extraction of information from the customers and the employees. The employee’s questionnaire will seek to establish whether they participate in the TQM system, whether they consider their participation vital among other things. (See appendix 1) on the other hand the customers will be expected to respond to questions regarding the satisfaction they feel the system gives them, whether they feel the system needs be changed, and the level of their involvement among others. (See appendix 2)
Use of interview schedules
The interview schedule will provide the guidelines upon which the interviews will be based the top managers interview schedule will seek to know the role the play in enhancing the efficiency of the system among other things. (See appendix 3) likewise the customers interview schedule will intend to establish in depth, the level to which they feel the system offers satisfaction.
Documents and reports from the department
Such documents will include policy papers and frameworks, department’s analysis reports among others. The reports will be used to track the policy changes within the department and the resultant gains from the shift in policies.
Other literature
Other additional literature like books and articles will be used to review previous research as well as views held by various scholars regarding the same. This would offer an appropriate ground for comparison between the researches hence draw adequate conclusions.
Data analysis and interpretation will be conducted by careful documentation of the interview and questionnaire results and relating the same to the literature reviewed.
The processes involved will include; coding of the collected information, categorization of the information, abstracting and comparing the information collected from the different stakeholders, integration of the information into the research followed by iteration. At this point those considered invalid will be refuted to pave way for the final interpretation and finally writing of the report. This may be summarized as shown below;
Ethics and human relations
The study derives its moral and ethical standing from the fact that it intends to propose best practices that help all stakeholders within a firm gain from the firm. During the study the privacy of all the participants will be adequately protected and no information obtained from the sources will be divulged to any other sources other than for the purposes of the research. (AIAA, 2007) Additionally, relevant permission will be sought from the relevant authorities before the commencement of the research. To ensure ethical issues are clearly addresses a checklist will be used.
Conclusion
The research will be helpful in drawing up of conclusions regarding the role that leadership and stakeholder involvement plays in the success of TQM systems. Rational of the selected research methods. The selected research methods draw their rational from the fact that; The interviews will provide a direct question and answer session with the study samples thus allowing the researcher to collect adequate information. Collecting information form various stakeholders will be helpful in coming up with non-biased conclusions.
Reviewing of previous literature will help provide an insight into what other researchers have had to say about the same.
The research will thus offer fundamental evidence as to the leadership roles and stakeholder involvement in the service sector with specific regard to the naturalization and residency department.
Potential challenges
Some of the potential challenges that the study may meet include;
- Insincere responses. This will however be countered by directly requesting the respondents to be as sincere as possible.
- Unwillingness of the staff for fear of probable victimization. This will be solved by assuring the employees the any information offered by them will not be used for administration but purely for purposes of the research.
References
- AIAA, (2007) Research Ethical Standards: Guidelines and Procedures. Vol. 45, No. 8, Editorial, No. 8, p. 1794
- Besterfield, D.H et al (2005) Total Quality Management, 3rd Ed., Prentice Hall of India: New Delhi
- Corbin, J. and Anselm, S. (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
- Crosby, P.B. (1979) Quality is Free: The Art of Making Quality Certain, Mentor publishers: New York
- Diwan, P. (1997) Quality in Totality: A managers Guide to TQM & ISO 9000, 1st ed., Deep & Deep Publications: Delhi
- Foti, R. J. & Hauenstein, N. (2007) Pattern and variable approaches in leadership emergence and effectiveness, Journal of Applied Psychology, 92: 347-355
- Freidson, Elliot (1975) Doctoring together: A Study of Professional Social Control, Chicago: University of Chicago Press
- Guest, D. (1987) Human Resource Management and Industrial Relations, Journal of Management Studies, 24(5): 503 – 21.
- Hoyle, D. (1998). ISO 9000: Quality System Development Hand Book, 1st ed., Butter Worth Heinemann Ltd: UK.
- Jorgensen, D. L. (1989) Participant Observation: A Methodology for Human Studies, Sage Publications: Newbury Park, CA
- Robbins, P.S. (1998) Organizational Behavior, 8th ed., Prentice Hall of India: New Delhi.
- Smith, J.A. & Foti R.J. (1998) A pattern approach to the study of leader emergence, Leadership Quarterly, 9: 147-160
- Wilkinson, et al (1998) Managing with Total Quality Management, 1st ed., Macmillan press Ltd: London.
