Total quality management in higher education : Modelling critical success factors.

Abstract

The research is aimed at determining the extent of TQM implementations in higher education institutions in the United States, United Kingdom, and Malaysia, uncovering common TQM critical success factors among the institutions, developing a generic and holistic TQM model for higher education institutions that incorporates the factors, measuring the performance of those factors and their contribution towards organisational excellence, and developing a mechanism for improving them.The research was conducted in three stages: exploratory study, descriptive, and empirical research. The exploratory study involves a literature review for searching structural TQM models that measure TQM essential elements. A criteria of modelling has been proposed for model selection. Based on this criteria, the Pyramid Model (Kanji, 1996) has been selected as a tentative model for further analysis. Further justification for selecting this model was provide by comparing it with the philosophical and system dimensions of TQM (Kanji, Morris & Haigh, 1993), ideas about TQM provided by major TQM contributors, and Hackman and Wageman's perspective of TQM philosophy (Hackman & Wageman, 1995).The descriptive study involved a questionnaire survey of higher education institutions in the U.S., U.K., and Malaysia. The survey result provided information on the extent of TQM implementations in those countries and indicated that the performance of TQM institutions are better then non-TQM institutions. It has also indicated that many higher education institutions in the three countries practiced the elements of the Pyramid Model. In the present research, the model's elements are regarded as critical success factors --- those few things that must go well to ensure the success of a manager or an organisation (Boynton & Zmud, 1984). The empirical research involved subjecting the Business Excellence Model to a structural analysis based on Partial Least Squares method by Wold (1980). Here, an iniital measurement instrument was developed to measure the model's constructs using multi-item rating scales. An iterative procedure retained only those items that were common and relevant to the higher education institutions in each sample. The final measurement scales had high values of Cronbach reliability coefficient. The model was found to be valid based on the result of %2 goodness-of-fit test and values of indices proposed by Bentler (1995).A mathematical equation that takes into account the mean scores and values of "outer coefficients" (strength of causal connections between items and constructs) was used to compute performance indices for the critical success factors and business excellence.The structural analysis produced "inner coefficients" that represent the strength of causal connections between the model's independent and dependent variables (constructs). These coefficients were used to determine the unit contributions of each construct toward business excellence. An improvement method that made use of the unit contributions had been developed to improve the values of critical success factor and business excellence. The method applied an algorithm that determined an optimal mix of critical success factors requiring improvements and made the improvements to the factors to achieve a desired business excellence target level. The Business Excellence Model has several notable strengths: simple; systematic; generic; robust; analytical; objective; critical and logical; and predictive.

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