An instrument for measuring total quality management practices in higher education - The development of comprehensive TQM practices measurement

• Main Authors: Yaakub, Kamarul Bahari, Yusoff, Rushami Zien
• Format: Conference or Workshop Item
• Language: English
• Published: 2010
• Subjects: HD28 Management. Industrial Management; LB2300 Higher Education
• Online Access: http://repo.uum.edu.my/4109/1/Ka.pdf; http://repo.uum.edu.my/4109/; http://cob.uum.edu.my/ictom

As the business world becomes more and more competitive, quality has become a must for every marketable product or service. Therefore, every company has to focus their attention on striving for excellent quality. Over the past few decades, industries have come to understand that in order to stay competitive globally, a self-assessment to continuously improve organizational performance is required. In this context, Total Quality Management (TQM) has been accepted as a disciplined management process in industry in order to cope with the changes in marketplace and to focus on quality in both their products as well as their services. Most researchers agreed that TQM has its roots established predominantly in industry, but there has been a strong push for adopting TQM in educational organizations. Many researchers feel that the principles of TQM can definitely contribute to the improvement of higher education. This paper aims to provide a TQM framework that emphasis on continuous improvements for quality measurement in higher education. Following a theoretical study of the dimensions of quality management in this environment, the paper reports on the literature research carried out from the past study. TQM philosophies and the comparative analysis of TQM adoption in industry versus higher education provide the theoretical and practical background for this work.The analysis of TQM in higher education was done considering various critical factors such as existing educational practices and the barriers of TQM. A customer-oriented strategy for measurement was selected on the basis of customers’ perceptions on quality dimensions, their importance ratings and their overall evaluation of the service provider. This paper proposed seven instruments can be used as self-assessment of the higher education institutions. They are leadership and top management commitment; policy and strategy; customer focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; human resource management; process and system management; and benchmarking and partnership.