Tqm In Construction Industry

Apart from general reasons that impede an application of TQM on the construction industry there are cultural specific reason that hinder the efforts of the Chinese government to implement TQM as a measure to improve quality.

TQM processes depend on continuous improvement based on feedback and communication. Communication between the different organizations, departments and hierarchical levels is complementary. Figure 1: Feedback as part of the transformation process

The strong traditions of Chinese distinction between ranks, do not allow that important topics are discussed between persons of different ranks (Zinzius 2004). People with no rank or title have no competence and thus no decision making power (Zinzius 2004). Therefore bottom

People who were born before the 1970s are now the major force at the high managerial level in Chinese enterprises (Zhang 2014). They gained and accumulated most of their professional experience in the traditional bureaucratic management system. The lack of teamwork experience has resulted in a lack of collaboration in this generation (Zhang 2014). Team work is not only one of the main components of TQM but also one of the main characterizes of construction projects (Fong, Lung 2007), where interdisciplinary teams have to collaborate in order to achieve a common

Conclusion

There are a number of reasons that impede the adoption of TQM principles on the Chinese construction industry to ensure better quality standards. Besides cultural reasons there are fundamental reasons that raise the question if TQM and construction industry are compatible.

Construction projects consist of differing parties that act competitive and adversarial to each other. This contradicts the TQM principle that all parts of the supply chain have to collaborate in exchange for good quality of the end product. Additionally the project bidding process creates little incentive for quality awareness, since it is mainly focused on price value rather than quality value. A change in order to shift the focus on quality criteria would require radical changes in the project awarding system to avoid price competition.

Apart from the characteristics of the industry itself, cultural related reasons might have an impact too.

TQM can only work on an environment where team work, constructive discussions and collaboration are part of the overall company policy. A lot of the Chinese traditional social structures do not include some of the modern approaches to improve team work between employees. Also here major changes are required to create an environment that allows continuous