Corporate sustainability imperative: Creating a climate and transforming culture for total quality management

Book excerpt: The paper examines the necessity of corporate cultural transformation for implementing Total Quality Management (TQM) in organizations and then explores the basic elements of organizational culture in order for setting the stage for formulating the possible ways of transforming organizational culture to make it appropriate for TQM. Based on secondary data, the paper argues that change of corporate culture is inevitable for a fast-changing organization that aspires to gain competitive advantage in the turbulent business environment through continuous quality improvement. It suggests that (a) there is no best way to transform organizational culture and (b) changed culture needs to be sustained for continued success. It also attempts to identify lessons from cultural transformation efforts in the TQM organizations. Implications for management and organizations are presented, along with the directions for future research.