The development of a dual phase approach to embracing a total quality culture in the Malaysian construction industry

The Malaysian construction industry, which plays a major role in the national agenda towards an industrialised nation, is seriously hampered by a lack of knowledge and poor communication of the meaning and importance of quality. There is no clear focus from a single body within the industry to promulgate and implement Total Quality Management (TQM). The vision framework is often missing within the Malaysian construction organisations. Many construction companies have realised that TQM is a dynamic way of managing for the future. An important issue in managing for the future is understanding the influence of culture and therefore, a solid understanding of culture and cultural issues informs a manager about how best to change behaviour in order to embed TQM. This research examines the nature of TQM implementation within construction organisations operating in the UK and Malaysia and explores how the prevailing organisational culture affects the TQM culture and vice versa. Also, it identifies barriers or critical success factors to effective implementation of TQM within the current construction paradigm. The methodologies used for the investigations included a wide ranging of literature review, a comparative study and comparative benchmarking. Questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews were executed. The questionnaire was mailed to 100 companies in the UK (where all of them were main contractors) and 200 companies in Malaysia (where 160 were main contractors and 40 were other companies related to construction). The overall response rate was 19.7%, with a response of 29% from UK and 15% from Malaysian organisations. Analyses were carried out with histogram, statistical mean ranking, cross tabulation and analysis of variance (ANOVA), under SPSS. In addition, some 26 organisations provided in-depth data that was not available through the questionnaires. This data was extracted within semi-structured interviews. A dual phase model was developed, which indicates cultural change drivers and the impact on the underlying cultural change framework. This model is based on key elements within the cultural change framework: firstly, is the conceptual framework where culture mapping is performed to determine the present culture and identify what culture needs to be changed to bring the desired TQ-culture. Secondly, is the operational framework where developing and implementing culture change strategies or culture transformation is performed to affect change. The model was used to test the four hypotheses and all were accepted as true. The work shows that the vision framework model requires the Malaysian construction organisations to challenge old assumptions about their business through learning. Particularly, on the real meaning of quality and what are their responsibilities in relation to quality objectives such as committed leadership, customer focus, integrated processes and teams, a quality driven agenda and commitment to people. Also, they have to become the change agent who leads the drive for continuous improvement.