Quality & Performance Excellence: Management, Organisation and Strategy (5th ed.)

Citation

Narasimhan, K. (2009), "Quality & Performance Excellence: Management, Organisation and Strategy (5th ed.)", Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 51-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/13683040910961216

James R. Evans is Professor of Quantitative Analysis and Operations Management and Director of the Total Quality Management Center in the College of Business Administration at the University of Cincinnati. He has written numerous textbooks in decision sciences, simulation, quality management, and operations management. He currently serves as a Judge for the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, after serving on the Board of Examiners from 1994 to 2001. He has also served on editorial boards for a number of international academic journals and has wide consulting experience.

The book has four parts comprising 11 chapters. The first three chapters, forming Part I, focus successively on the concepts, principles (derived from quality gurus' philosophies) and their applicability to different types of organizations (for example, manufacturing, services, health care and education); the three major frameworks – Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, ISO 9000:2000, and Six Sigma – for pursuing performance excellence – and their similarities and differences; and the role of quality in achieving competitive advantage and the use of a “balanced scorecard” in managing strategically.

Performance Excellence and Organization Theory is the theme of Part II, and is covered in four chapters. Chapter 4 first discusses the importance of customers and suppliers and then presents customer‐supplier relationships' principles and examples in action and briefly explains how they relate to organization theory. Designing organizations for performance excellence is the topic of chapter 5, and it explains the differences between traditional and high performance organizations with concrete examples of organizations that have successfully redesigned themselves by focusing on quality. Chapter 6 is devoted to a discussion on the principles underlying the design, control, and improvement of organizational processes. Approaches to implementing them are also covered with several examples from leading organizations. The most important tools for planning, design, and improvement of quality are summarized in the following chapter. Other issues covered briefly are the role of creativity and innovation and statistical process control.

The next two chapters, which form Part III, cover organizational behavioral issues. The two topics covered in succession are the importance of teams and the various types of teams found in high‐performance organizations, and the key concepts, principles, and practices of employee engagement, empowerment and motivation to support quality efforts.

Part IV also comprises two chapters, and focuses on leadership and organizational change issues. Chapter 10 covers the roles of a quality leader and a few theories of leadership and their connection to quality management philosophies. Chapter 11 is devoted to a discussion of organizational change and learning, organizational culture, and approaches to sustaining performance excellence programs, with concrete examples.

Each chapter begins with a “Performance Excellence Profile” of quality award recipients. The upper case font used for the whole text may put off some readers. A total of 72 boxed vignettes of cases and examples are included to illustrate key ideas and themes, to promote critical thinking. Chapters end with review and discussion questions, short and long cases from various parts of the world, and end notes.