Driving quality culture change by a risk assessment approach

One important element needed for the achievement of Total Quality Management (TQM) is to bring about a change in the quality culture. From the organizational learning point of view, it is very difficult to identify the (theory-in-use' and this makes it even more difficult to bring about a change in the underlying assumptions, which are the driving forces behind the culture. This paper presents a new concept, based on a risk assessment approach (RAA), to identify the assumptions that underlie the quality culture of organizations. Using the RAA, organizations and firms will make decisions in line with their current assumptions and beliefs. Their theory-in-use will then become evident during the subsequent reflection session. Double-loop learning can then be used to help the firms to adopt TQM once the errors have been corrected by a change in the underlying assumptions and the corresponding actions. A successful empirical example is described in this paper to demonstrate the implementation of the new approach.