Total Quality Management as Information Infrastructure Upgrade Presentation Petter Øgland,

Empirical observation: TQM is difficult to manage, as TQM often consists of many interrelated and unpredictable control/improvement activities

Proposition What if we designed the TQM system to “manage itself”?

Conceptual framework (1) ANT for understanding the politics of TQM design –Clark & Fincham (2003) CAS as prescriptive theory for TQM: “bootstrap algorithm” –Kelly (1994); Dooley et al (1995) –Holland (1995); Wheately (1999) –Axelrod & Cohen (2000)

Conceptual framework (2) II tries to bridge ANT and CAS (Ciborra et al, 2000; Braa et al, 2007) II has proved particularly useful for formulating ideas about action research (Braa et al, 2004) Action research and TQM (improvement) can be seen as the same thing (Checkland & Holwell, 1998; Beckford, 2002)

Research question How to design TQM as II? Of particular interest: How to succeed with TQM when TQM success criteria are not present in the organisation.

Data collection Interviews with TQM practitioners on what systems they have and how they work I present a method for doing TQM as II, that has been in use for approx 10 years: –TQM system as an action research, focusing on self- improvement –Academic networks viewed as part of the system design Compare “TQM as II” with insights from interviews and literature

Data analysis Strengths and weaknesses of the “TQM as II” design –Acceptance of standards in organisations –TQM practitioner needs to operate both as engineer, scientist and politician

Contribution to TQM / II theory Contributions to the “bootstrapping algorithm” in II theory as applied to TQM: –Paper 1: The importance of building feedback loops into the design. Presence of researchers generates “Hawthorne effect” and improvement becomes automatic (IRIS, 2006) –Paper 2: Research questions should be formulated as self-reflective to make sure they aid to the problem of “improving the improvers” (IRIS, 2007) –Paper 3: When TQM success criteria are not present, they can often be “socially constructed” (as an illusion) and still make TQM work (UKSS, Oxford, 2007)