UNIVERSITI UTARA MALAYSIA

ARTICLE REVIEW
Quality Management and Job Satisfaction:
An Empirical Study

SUBMITTED TO : EN MOHD ZAINUDIN BIN OTHMAN

SUBMITTED BY : GANGGAH DEVI A/P MURUGAYA
DATE

: 18TH MAY 2016

Title

: Quality management and job satisfaction: an empirical study

Author

: Simon S.K. Lam

Journal

: International journal of quality and reliability management, 1995, Vol.12

Issue 4 pp 72-78, 2 Tables.

1.0

Introduction
The study examines managerial concern for quality has reached unprecedented
level. Most of the TQM programmes claim to help a company to increase
customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction and productivity. Better quality has
been shown to contribute to greater market share and return on investment, as
well as lower manufacturing costs and improved productivity when the research
has confirmed that the strategic benefits of quality programmes. Its shows that a
widespread of consensus that TQM is a way of managing organizations to
improve their customer satisfaction whereas there also less agreement on TQM
programmes that will help organization to improve their employees satisfaction.
This study shows what effects workers see TQM programmes having on their
jobs and whether workers perceive an increase in job satisfaction because of
TQM.

2.0

Contents of the journal

The paper includes:
2.1

Conceptual framework that identifies the Conceptual framework that

identifies the considerable amount of TQM to understand and improve the
organizational process, refocus the company on the customers needs,
involve and motivate the people in achieving the quality output.

2.2

Research Methodology
The questionnaires were sent to 462 front-line supervisors from eight
diverse organizations which had been using the TQM programme for more
than 2 years. The researcher emphasized to the contacts that they were to
distribute questionnaires to all qualifying front-line supervisors, defined as
front-line operational staffs with supervisory responsibility and the contacts
within each organization distributed the questionnaire. All the respondent
were guaranteed anonymity and provided with a stamped, pre-addressed
envelope. The respondent ranged in age from 20 to 59 years with a mean
age of 32.5 years and 68 per cent were female. Of the sample, 75 per
cent had high school education,23 per cent had some university education
or an undergraduate degree and left 2 per cent had at least some
graduate training. Respondents had been in their organizations from one
to 31 years with a mean tenure of 6.4 years.

2.3

Findings and discussions

The finding shows that the results provide strongly indicates that the TQM
has changes the perceive of front-line supervisors job gradually by
increasing responsibility for the results which is about 74.9 per cent,
improved relationship with fellow workers (70.6 per cent), increase
workload (66.8 per cent), and also increased knowledge of supervision
(64.5 per cent).

3.0

Comments and recommendations

The study discovered that the results suggest that a TQM programme does not
necessarily enhance all aspects of employee satisfaction. TQM programmes
improve the co-worker relationship and the knowledge of supervision about their
jobs. However, most of the respondents do not seem to like this change, stating
that TQM programmes do not make their work more interesting and important. In
addition, respondents believed that TQM had reduced their autonomy. They
stated that they now had less freedom in how to do their job but greater

responsibility for the results of their work. While they did not perceive any great
change in pay, job security and promotional opportunities, the respondents said
that they now had greater knowledge of the results of their work and the working
relationships with their fellow employees had improved. Overall respondents
review was that the TQM does not increased their job satisfaction and that their
personal effectiveness had not been increased too.
Employees may be treated as tools for achieving quality, goals with management
trying to make sure they are calibrated and ready to do their job. They are
trained to produce quality and sometimes this means that they are programmed
and have little autonomy in how to do the work. Their feelings of satisfaction and
importance are a vital part of the TQM objective. Quality management often fails
because it overemphasizes the hard side of quality and neglects the soft side
the people, and forgets that it depends on broad-based employee involvement
and commitment. All staff contribute to customer satisfaction through the quality
chain and all the people in an organization need to be motivated towards a
common goal. To expect the establishment of a magic quality control system to
produce all the desired results is navely optimistic. The necessary links must be
built on people and companies need to realize that a good way to move towards
quality excellence is through a concerted effort to improve not only the quality of
the product or service but also the quality of the working life of their employees.
Therefore, the soft side must reinforce the employees commitment to quality and
enhance their job satisfaction and the extent to which this is done may decide the
success or failure of TQM. It is clear that the current TQM programmes fall short
of this balance and that we need to be aware that, as Wilkinson[8] puts it,
whether we take this issue seriously will eventually determine the future of TQM.