FöRFATTARE
Johansson, Åsa; Oskarsson, Helena

DATUM
2000-08-14

INSTITUTION
Industriell ekonomi och samhällsvetenskap / Informatik och systemvetenskap

SAMMANFATTNING
Due to global competition and increased technological use the demands on the organisation’s ability to improve the quality of services and products has increased. Therefore, many organisations work with improvements on a continual basis. However, it appears to be difficult to achieve a successful improvement work that gives the organisation a competitive advantage, and this made us interested in exploring why many attempts to improvements are considered as failures. Our research includes two different improvement approaches, Total Quality Management (TQM) and Soft Systems Methodology (SSM).

The purpose of this thesis has been to illuminate some difficulties one may encounter when working with improvement projects based on TQM. It has also been our aim to explore why these difficulties occur and if it is possible to address them with SSM.

During our research we have found that many of the difficulties are related to human dimensions, as for example peoples attitudes, values and norms. We have found that TQM is an approach that is well provided with statistical tools, but there is less guidance about how to handle difficulties with human dimensions. We believe that SSM can complement TQM, as SSM is developed to handle illstructured, complex problem situations of social concern. SSM as a methodology do not solve the difficulties, but it provides devices to structure a debate about them.

ISSN 1404-5508 / ISRN LTU-SHU-EX--00/162--SE / NR 2000:162