THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, September 14, 1995 TAG: 9509140343
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT
TODAY: TQM may seem like a fad, but it probably will help America
transform from an industrial age to a knowledge society.
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
Total quality management may be the latest management gizmo to ratchet up worker productivity.
But this is no pet rock.
As fads go, TQM is more like the Slinky: It may one day cease being the new trend, but it will probably be around for decades.
TQM is helping to marshal changes in the work force that may seem outlandish in today's context. W. Edwards Deming's quality management theory may not be causing these waves, but it is riding their crest.
The hip theory among management consultants is that by the time this transformation is done most people won't have ``jobs.'' Most think the generation now entering the work force won't end up on the payroll of a big company.
Instead, businesses will hire workers - even white-collar professionals - for specific projects. When the project is done, the ``job'' will end, and the worker will go do his thing for some other company.
Trade union members have worked from job to job for decades. But such an approach in other business sectors would be a radical departure. In effect, we would all be freelance employees, loyal only to ourselves.
In 10 years, only 20 percent of the population will still work for big corporations. The other 80 percent will work for or own small support businesses, predicts Chere Simons, a Norfolk consultant with Priority Management.
A few years ago, when Simons first started making that prediction, she sometimes thought it was too futuristic. Now, she sees it happening.
Many let go by an employer will be rehired as short-term contract employees. Companies are expected to farm out everything but their core, revenue-producing operations. That will allow companies to avoid expensive labor costs like health and retirement benefits.
Organizations are giving rank-and-file workers more power as they purge companies of middle managers. One example: Strict hierarchy is passe at Sentara Health System, whose self-directed team system means some employees don't know their job titles.
Technology will also displace workers.
What does all this have to do with the quality management movement? Quality will become even more important as these independent businesses compete for contracts with larger companies or government agencies.
If these forecasts seem too fantastic, history shows economic change can transpire that quickly.
Before World War I, less than one-fifth of the workers toiled for large companies. By the late 1950s, half the country's goods were produced by 500 mega-companies.
Despite weekly announcements of multi-billion dollar mergers, the experts say the economy is shifting back toward smaller, more adaptable businesses.
Daily news items confirm that this transformation is already underway. Even as Chase Manhattan Corp. and Chemical Banking Co. announced two weeks ago a merger that would create the country's largest bank, the number of people in the banking world shrank. The merger is expected to wipe out 12,000 jobs. The combination of technology and mergers is expected to eliminate 90,000 banking jobs annually by 2000, a study by accountants Deloitte & Touche suggests.
Meanwhile, the number of temporary workers continues to surge. It jumped 43 percent over the past five years to more than 1 million, the U.S. Labor Department reported recently.
Economist and author Jeremy Rifkin predicts in a new book, called The End of Work, the new technologies ``spell a death sentence for civilization as we have come to know it.'' A few information elite will control the global economy, and everybody else will work on their terms.
But Simons says potential freedom lies in this ``workerless'' society. In the industrial age, she says, the companies owned the tools of productivity. But not in the information age.
``The production tool, the knowledge, is in our heads,'' she says. ``We own that.''
In this world of small support businesses and freelance workers, rules affecting more than work would have to change. When mass-production industries were the backbone of the economy, labor unions won health care and pensions from companies. Congress passed laws protecting workers' safety.
Who will pay for these necessities if few people work directly for companies?
Even if these changes don't happen as drastically as some predict, work won't be the same.
Management guru and author James Champy says the cultural shift in the workplace has, so far, only been partly realized. Even so, strides have been significant.
``The revolution we started has gone, at best, only halfway,'' Champy now says. ``I have also learned that half a revolution is not better than no revolution at all. It may, in fact, be worse.''
It's at this midway point that TQM finds itself in 1995. Many companies and workers are struggling with it, because it demands changes in the way a person works and thinks.
The Japanese spent 30 years rebuilding the foundations of their economy. Following that guideline, the U.S. has a ways to go. ILLUSTRATION: Dilbert Cartoon
KEYWORDS: CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT by CNB