For over three decades, in the practice of organization management, a trend of utilizing standards developed and shared by specialized standardization organizations has been emerging. Currently, there is a wide choice of such documents which concern many aspects of an organization's functioning, e.g. minimizing the risk, reducing negative influence on the environment or carrying out self-evaluation. ISO 9001 standard, which provides the requirements for a quality management system, may be called 'the flagship' of such standards. The document has been widely recognized and commonly used in the business environment, which is proven by over one million ISO 9001 certified organizations. The standard, together with those directly tied to it (i.e. ISO 9000 and ISO 9004), form a standardization approach in quality management1. The monograph assumes that this term should be seen as a set of interconnected and separable issues described in the standards (e.g. methods, rules, guidelines etc.) which are analyzed basing on the current and former revisions as well. The accepted goal of the study is the conceptualization of the standardization approach in quality management and the assessment of its status within quality management. The first chapter attempts to provide a draft of the nature and scope of quality management. It identifies four currently dominant methods of quality management, i.e. (1) lean management, (2) six sigma, (3) excellence model and (4) quality management system compliant with ISO 9001 requirements. Each of them developing, having numerous and diverse practical applications, moreover being studied, described and modified, creates a unique approach within quality management. In many ways, special role among them is attributed to an approach concerning the standardized system of quality management ISO 9001, which has been called "standardization approach in quality management". The content of the second chapter is devoted to standardized management systems. The deliberation starts with describing the nature and goals of carrying out the standardization. It characterizes the basic kinds of standards while focusing attention on differences occurring between the formal and informal standardization, which are hardly noticed in the Polish quality management literature. It also attempts to define the key barriers and benefits of standardization, especially in reference to the activity of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). The latter part of the chapter concerns the standardized systems of management and standards which include the requirements for the systems and additional information about them. Their nature was defined, and the current knowledge about them was systemized. The next, third chapter is a deepening, and significant enlarging of the issues analyzed in the former parts of the monograph. It includes a characteristic (including evolution) and author's evaluation of the three standards involved in the standardization approach in quality management, i.e. ISO 9000, ISO 9001 and ISO 9004. Therefore, the considerations in the chapter aim at preparing the ground to distinguish the key components of the approach. The fourth chapter proposes a new way of disintegrating the standardization approach. On a retrospective basis (i.e. taking into consideration all previous revisions of every document) of the analysis of the content of ISO 9000 series, twelve components of the approach were identified and characterized. They include: (1) definitions, (2) graphic representation of relations between terms and definitions, (3) quality management principles, (4) requirements for quality management systems, (5) guidelines explaining (interpreting, exemplifying, etc.) the requirements for a quality management system, (6) guidelines related to additional (i.e. not included among requirements for the system of quality management) activities/solutions connected with quality management, e.g., concerning benchmarking, (7) self-assessment tool, (8) guidelines concerning quality management in relation to chosen forms of activity (e.g., related to services), (9) guidelines concerning improvement of an organization including the description of chosen techniques and tools such as, e.g., Pareto chart, (10) description of the relation between chosen standards (e.g., the current and previous revision of the same standard or between ISO 9001 and ISO 14001), (11) information on other International Standards on quality management developed by ISO/TC 176, and (12) general information. The fifth chapter has a cognitive and empirical nature since its content is based on the results of surveys carried out among experts dealing with quality management. This part presents the characteristics of the empirical studies, and then it evaluates the validity of publishing the standards concerning management. The next move was defining the significance (rank) and also the elaboration quality of each component of the standardization approach. Moreover, a categorization (using IPA technique) of those components was performed. It provided six groups of components which were then attributed with recommendations concerning the development. Next, utilizing two views of evaluation, the usefulness of standardization approach was analyzed. The first one took into consideration the usefulness in education and training activities while the latter involved the practitioners dealing with quality management in organizations. Additionally, a component categorization was performed, which resulted in four groups of different levels of usefulness. The last part of the chapter analyzes experts' opinions on the changes in the standardization approach that have been introduced so far and also their predictions for the future of this approach. The summary collects the most important findings which are a result of recapitulation of the conducted research and analyses. The conducted research proves that the idea of formulating standards concerning management and the structure of the standardization approach (i.e. kinds of included components) are an accepted part of the quality management movement. However, the elaboration quality of the separate components and the scope of changes introduced in the consecutive revisions are evaluated lower. Although they are also positively evaluated, the level of acceptance is not high. As a result, the usefulness of the approach (as a whole) both in the education and training activities and also for the practitioners dealing with quality management in organizations is considered low.(original abstract)
JavaScript jest wyłączony w Twojej przeglądarce internetowej. Włącz go, a następnie odśwież stronę, aby móc w pełni z niej korzystać.