Especially in industries were prices are tumbling, such as computers, adds to the strain on TQM" The experience of downsizing, business re-engineering undoubtedly created job insecurity and demotivation amongst employees, thereby undermining the employee involvement essential to any successful TQM programme. The experience of companies such as Xerox and BA who both were regarded as having successful TQM programmes found it difficult to maintain the level of commitment from their staff which is one of the pre-requisites of continuing it's TQM programme. Many companies found themselves in a position where they believed it necessary to make major structural changes to their organisations in a relatively short space of time. IBM, for example halved their workforce in a period of ten years. The comparison between reengineering/ downsizing/de-layering on the one hand and TQM on the other is an interesting one. Both types of process are aimed at meeting customer requirements in a cost effective manner. Both concentrate on the processes necessary to deliver the outputs to customers. They strongly diverge however in their strategies for change with TQM adopting the continuous improvement route and re-engineering utilising immediate, radical, mega-change. There have been debates about the success or otherwise of TQM programmes over the years. Studies have been carried out, for example by the by the US General Accounts Office covering American companies and in the UK by The Bradford Management Centre. These have found that companies that had fully adopted Total Quality Management Total Quality Management programmes produced significantly better bottom line results than comparable companies who had not taken that approach. A number of studies by academics and consultants also identified that a common cause of failure of Total Quality Management programmes was simply down to either poor management or a lack of commitment to quality. There were, and still are, a large number of company directors who believe that "quality is not their responsibility".
Rozpoczynając rozważania nad tematem "zarządzania przez jakość" wpierw należy odpowiedzieć sobie na pytanie czym właściwie jest "jakość"? Czasem jakość może być rozumiana jako urzędowo określona norma, jednak najczęściej jakość definiuje się jako stopień zaspokojenia potrzeb klienta, aktualnych i przyszłych.
