Costly Thy Habit as Thy Purse Can Buy, But Not Expressed in Fancy; Rich, Not Gaudy: Total Quality Management in Applied Psychology: A Review of Mary Walton’s The Deming Management Method
Continued

by Kyle E. Ferguson
University of Nevada - Reno

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The Deming Management Method

In the foreword written by Deming himself, he opens with an admonitory note maintaining that a company’s vitality hinges on a continual process of improving the quality of its products and services. He contrasts this with what he calls retroactive management. The common threads of these practices are a focus on the end-product, work standards, and the annual appraisal of workers, to name only a few. Deming hastens to add that in yielding to such a position courts a company’s ultimate demise. He submits, then, that a complete overhaul of an organization’s infrastructure is in order, rather than attempting a "patchwork" of sorts. The main point touching this notion is the recognition of the distinction between a stable system and an unstable one. It follows from this that the responsibility of ensuring stability should fall under the auspices of management. Cast in these terms, Walton elaborates on these points and an extended analysis is set down.

Before getting to the crux of Deming’s model, Walton first provides an historical backdrop upon which the development of his ideas is brought to the fore. Walton presents a detailed, though, highly readable account, forging the context from which Deming’s system emerged. From a psychological standpoint, it is interesting to see how certain principles did unfold as a result of serendipitous events. A case in point is his experiences while at Hawthorne, and how they served as a catalyst for his ensuing position on management policies.

After her short biographical sketch of Deming, Walton turns to an overview of Deming’s (1986) "chain reaction" equation, the sine qua non of his theoretical standpoint. His position can be summed up as follows. By improving quality an organization’s costs go down on account of fewer mishaps, lower waste and so forth, that in turn, lowers the need for reworking the system. As a corollary, production is driven up. Continual reduction in mistakes, along with continually improving quality, translates into lower and lower costs (Walton, 1986). More important still, he adds, is how the product or service is marketed. Even though a company has a product of value, it first has to be placed on the market, and has to be packaged as an attractive commodity. Regarding this latter point, applied behavior analysis offers a case in point. Here is a discipline that employs such language as punishment, discrimination, and extinction when dealing with the public about very sensitive issues. It is no wonder why this coterie is so often misinterpreted by outsiders (Foxx, 1996). Additionally, touching the point of "customer relations" is the concept of quality. Quality, from his vantage point has meaning only in terms of the customer, to wit, the customer’s needs. Cast in these terms, human service agencies should foster an ongoing dialogue with customers as to their satisfaction with the delivery of services. It is not to be overlooked that satisfaction is a multiplex concept impinging on all levels of programmatic development, from early planning to outcome measurement (see the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis’s (1991) special issue on social validity). In the same vein, in response to customer feedback, the product is adjusted accordingly, and then reinstated back into practice. Given that this cycle operates perpetually, services must evolve in concert with shifts in consumer demands. Here at once applied psychology is truly market driven.

The middle third of Walton’s book, considers at some length, the 14 points taken from Deming’s manifesto on management practices, along with "The Seven Deadly Diseases" that endanger a company’s vitality. In light of page restrictions, these points will not be specifically addressed here. Though, as summarized elsewhere (Mawhinney, 1992, p. 526), these rules at some level entail knowledge about statistical variability, an understanding of causal relations of system variables tied to outcome variation, an appreciation of scientific methods for isolating cause-effect relationships between variables in the system and output variation, and behavioral variables related to work processes attributed to quality outputs. It is in point here that the above rules predominantly reflect antecedent control and tend to neglect the contingencies that maintain behavior (e.g., reinforcers). And for this, Deming, among other TQM proponents, have been criticized for mistakenly ignoring consequential control in interventions designed to improve organizational performance (Mawhinney, 1992; Redmon & Dickinson, 1987; Sanders & Sanders, 1994).

The remaining third of the book deals first with data presentation, including flow and control charts. Replete with figures, Walton expounds on their application, and the implication of data trends, and so forth. After which, and finally, Walton reviews a panoply of anecdotal evidence of how the Deming method rescued numerous companies out of the perils of financial destitution. Here Deming’s principles yield profitable returns when put in practice – Deming’s strategies work.

As applied professionals, we have much to gain from adopting Deming’s methods, given the evolving political and economical climate unfolding before us. In merging TQM and OBM postulates might very well have a synergistic effect when put into practice (Mawhinney, 1992), making us a highly marketable force in the era of cost-containment and managed care. Walton’s book will undoubtedly serve as an indispensable resource in any practitioner’s library.

References

Benedict, J. G., & Phelps, R. (1998). Introduction: Psychology’s view of managed care. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 29, 29-30.

Blanck, R. R., & DeLeon, P. H. (1996). Managed care: Strongly conflicting views. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 27, 323-324.

Deming, W. E. (1982). Quality, production, and competitive position. Cambridge, MA: Center for Advanced Engineering Study, MIT.

Deming, W. E. (1986). Out of crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Foxx, R. M. (1996). Translating the covenant: The behavior analyst as ambassador and translator. The Behavior Analyst, 19, 147-161.

Gabor, A. (1990). The man who discovered quality: How W. Edwards Deming brought the quality revolution to America: The stories of Ford, Xerox, and GM. New York: Time Books.

Hayes, S. C., & Heilby, E. (1996). Psychology’s drug problem: Do we need a fix or should we just say no? American Psychologist, 51, 198-206.

Geller, E. S. (Ed.). (1991). Social Validity: Multiple perspectives [Special Issue]. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, vol. 24 (2).

Mainstone, L. E., & Levi, A. S. (1987). Fundamentals of statistical process control. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 9, 5-21.

Mawhinney, T. C. (1992). Total quality management and organizational behavior management: An integration for continual improvement. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 25, 525-543.

Pfadt, A, & Wheeler, D. J. (1995). Using statistical process control to make data-based clinical decisions. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 28, 349-370.

Redmon, W. K., & Dickinson, A. M. (1987). A comparative analysis of statistical process control, theory D, and behavior analytic approaches to quality control. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 9, 47-65.

Sanders, R. R., & Sanders, J. L. (1994). W. Edwards Deming, quality analysis, and total behavior management. The Behavior Analyst, 17, 115-125.

Walton, M. (1986). The Deming management method. New York : The Berkeley Publishing Group.