.

             The third assumption is that organizations are systems of interdependent parts, and the central problems they face invariably cross-traditional functional lines. To produce high-quality products efficiently, for example, product designers must address manufacturing challenges and trade-offs as part of the design process. Deming and Juran are insistent that cross-functional problems must be addressed collectively by representatives of all relevant functions (Juran, 1969: 80-85; Deming, 1993: 50-93). Ishikawa, by contrast, is much less system-oriented: He states that cross-functional teams should not set overall directions; rather, each line division should set its own goals using local objective-setting procedures. (Hackman & Wageman, 1995).

             The final assumption concerns senior management. Quality is viewed as ultimately and inescapably the responsibility of top management. Because senior managers create the organizational systems that determine how products and services are designed and produced, the quality-improvement process must begin with management's own commitment to total quality. Employees' work effectiveness is viewed as a direct function of the quality of the systems that managers create.

             Some writers have asserted that TQM provides a historically unique approach to improving organizational effectiveness, one that has a solid conceptual foundation and, at the same time, offers a strategy for improving performance that takes account of how people and organizations actually operate. In the early 1980s, a new concept entered managerial discourse: Total Quality Management (TQM). Later called "Total Quality" (TQ), TQM was heralded by governments, major corporations and the business media as the most effective and elegant way out of the economic crisis and into the global market. It should be noted, however, that the preoccupation with quality is by no means new. In the 1980s, TQM became a product in itself, nearly a billion-dollar industry (Giroux & Landry, 1998).