An integrated TQM approach for the development of medium size organisations.

TQM is seen to be a key ingredient in the working of some of the most successful companies in the world. Awards for these companies include 'The Deming Award' in Japan, 'The Baldrige Award' in America, the 'EFQM Award' in Europe, and the UK has also recently launched 'The U.K. Quality Award'. This thesis serves to lay a foundation for investigating quality in medium size organisations; where, with management understanding, there is potential to comprehensively implement such strategies and thereby enhance those organisations.In this thesis I have considered TECs as medium-size organisations. In order to develop a TQM approach for TECs I have considered a number of TQM authorities and compared their principles with the European Quality Award (EQA) model in order to develop a model suitable for TECs.In the process of this comparison work it was realised that the EQA model was too complex for this particular application. Hence, I have developed a simpler TQM model which also incorporates all the characteristics of the EQA model.With the help of this model and personal interviews, data was gathered in order to test the suitability of the model and to identify critical success factors with medium-size organisations.The results, in general, indicate that there is a high calibre of management and staff, within the organisations visited, but with little understanding of TQM concepts. However, there were examples of 'good practice' and strong processes. Recommendations are set out detailing the kind of quality strategies medium-size organisations could adopt to enhance their effectiveness.