Top management commitment and Empowerment of employees in TQM implementation

Abstract: Top management commitment and employees empowerment is one of the most important and vital principle in total quality management, because it is often assumes to have a strong relationship with customer satisfaction. In TQM implementation top management commitment in creating an organizational climate that empowers employees is very imperative. Thus, this can be achieved with top management commitment in training employees and giving employees opportunities to be responsible for the quality of their work. TQM strategy brings about a turn around in corporate culture as compared to the old traditional system of management in which the top management simply give orders and the employees merely obey them. In this study we’ll show that TQM objective of quality improvement and customer satisfaction can be better achieve if the top management are committed to empower employees to be responsible for the quality of their work and also empowerment in relation to decision making authority and process. We’ll as well show that empowerment in TQM brings about a flattened organizational chart where there is a shared responsibility between the managers and the employees. Despite some arguments put forward by some researchers to criticize employee empowerment, we’ll as well show that employees’ empowerment and improved level of job satisfaction can be facilitated by top management leadership and commitment to the goal of customer satisfaction in TQM organization.