THE WORLD SERIES OF QUALITY-CONTROL - A CASE-STUDY IN THE PACKAGE DELIVERY INDUSTRY

Internal competition has been a part of many interventions in organiza tional behavior management as well as in nonbehavioral management prog rams. Often competition is implicit in feedback programs. The use of i nternal competition is endorsed by some theorists and questioned by ot hers. In the present study, formal competition was used as an interven tion to improve quality control in a package delivery company. In this industry, speed and accuracy of package delivery are critical to comp any success. For the major companies in the industry, these outcomes a re dependent upon the quality of sorting and loading at central loadin g facilities located throughout the United States. In order to improve quality control in sorting and loading, a competitive program of feed back and positive reinforcement was implemented using a baseball analo g system Extant work groups were paired in daily games in which points were scored based on company quality control measures. Fourteen teams were divided into leagues and divisions leading to playoffs and a wor ld series. The program demonstrated quality increases, prompting manag ement to replace the local program with a regional competition between facilities. These data suggest that internal competition can be a pot ent intervention to improve quality control.