DREAMS AND DESIGNS ON STRATEGY - A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF TQM AND MANAGEMENT CONTROL

Any management discourse, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), has power effects that can transform individuals into subjects who secure some sense of their own identity through participating either as manag ers or employees in the practices it embraces. The central argument of this paper, however, is that despite these power effects, TQM is not nearly as effective or rational in controlling employees as its gurus exhort or its critics fear. These arguments are explored empirically t hrough a case study of a major UK retail bank. In particular we illust rate how power and identity relations can intervene to undermine feedb ack to employees and prevent the upward how of information to manageme nt necessary to ensure that TQM operates effectively. These dynamics a re seen to reflect the cost conscious and short-term profit demands en demic within British industry. Just as these 'bottom line' considerati ons have limited the effectiveness of management innovations in the pa st, they have also created problems for the TQM programme in our case study here. No doubt this will continue to be the case with future man agement innovations not least because organisational life is always 'm essy', given its political character. In the form of both career compe tition and opportunities for resistance to the totalising demands of T QM this paper provides further evidence of the political obstacles to effective innovation.