7.2. PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER: TQM AND NUMMI

If human resource management strategies are implemented in a halfhearted, piecemeal fashion, they lead to predictable failure. Success requires a comprehensive strategy and long-term commitment that many organizations espouse but fewer deliver. One example of a comprehensive strategy that combines structural and human resource elements is total quality management (TQM), which swept across corporate America in the 1980s. Quality gurus such as W. Edwards Deming (1986), Joseph Juran (1989), Philip Crosby (1989), and Kaoru Ishikawa (1985) differed on specifics, but they all emphasized workforce involvement, participation, and teaming as essential components of a serious quality effort.

Hackman and Wageman (1995) analyzed the theory and practice of the quality movement and concluded that it represented a coherent and distinctive philosophy, consistent with existing research on effective human resource management. They summarized four core assumptions in TQM: