Total Quality Management and employee involvement: Are they compatible?
探讨全面质量管理（TQM）与员工参与（赋权）之间的关系，分析两者是相互支持还是存在冲突，对管理者理解如何有效结合这两种管理方法有参考价值。
Executive Overview Total Quality Management (TQM) programs are an important and prominent approach to management. With the creation of the Baldrige award and the competitiveness challenges which many corporations face, they have become extremely popular in (he United States during the last decade. Despite the recent Hurry of studies questioning their effectiveness, most large corporations have a program that incorporates some of the practices and principles of total quality management.1 One of the most important principles of TQM concerns employee involvement or, as it is often called, empowerment. It is common for a TQM program to state that employee involvement is very important to its success. There is a long history of research and writing on employee involvement and how it can affect organizational performance.2 It, too, has become increasingly popular. One possibility, as suggested by TQM programs, is that employee involvement is best thought of as an activity which supports these programs. Another possibility is that TQM practices are best used in support of employee involvement programs. Is the difference between TQM as a part of involvement and involvement as a part of TQM more than just a difference in phrasing? Does the choice between these two alternatives have important implications for the way an organization is actually managed and structured? The answers to these two questions contain important clues about when and why TQM programs tail and how they and employee involvement programs can be made effective. To answer them we need to look briefly at the history of both TQM and employee involvement programs.