Is Total Quality Management Enough For Competitive Advantage Essay

Is Total Quality Management Enough For Competitive Advantage - Essay Example ers are becoming more and more aware, empowered, enlightened, and exposed to more products than anytime on the history of this planet (Tenner, & DeToro, pp. 123-159, 1992). They have substitutes for everything, businesses are being done at global levels and no part of the world is now isolated from the other parts (Ross, & Perry, pp. 78-96, 1999). This situation led the experts to come up with new ways to survive and magnify revenues. The concepts of total Quality Management and competitive advantage are a couple of them. This paper is devoted to the discussion that is total quality management enough for competitive advantage. Before the paper moves any further, it is important at this stage to understand and reflect on the basic concepts of Total Quality management and competitive advantage. Experts view total Quality management as a â€Å"Management or corporate philosophy that asks firms to strive for making the best use of all the available resources and integrating all organisational functions such as Research and development, Planning, Manufacturing, Customer Service, etc so that organisational goals of maximum profit and customer satisfaction could be attained in the best possible way† (Hakes, pp. 12-38, 1991) (Gummer, & McCallion, pp. 45-92, 2007). There are many other elements attached with it. Authorities in Management studies regard total quality management as process through which, companies can successfully move on to the road of continuous enhancement and expansion, enchanted customers, empowered workforce that lead to lowest possible costs and highest possible returns (Ross, & Perry, pp. 78-96, 1999). It is imperative to understand here that there is a huge amount of debate going on the scope and dimensions of Total Quality management and different scholars have different approaches towards it (Gummer, & McCallion, pp. 45-92, 2007). There are a number of ideas regarding total quality management; however, all diverge on the single point of