Chileshe, N and Watson, P (2004) The measurement of quality management levels within UK construction SMEs: Development and validation of TQ-SMART. In: Khosrowshahi, F (ed.) Proceedings of 20th Annual ARCOM Conference, 1-3 September 2004, Edinburgh, UK.
Abstract
Manufacturing and service industries have developed and validated techniques for identifying critical success factors related to the measurement of deploying quality initiatives. However, little research has been undertaken to examine if these techniques can be applied to UK Construction related SMEs. This noted omission has been the motivation for this research project. The main aims of this paper are twofold; firstly, to identify the major constructs of Total Quality Management (TQM) and refine the scales for measuring the constructs, secondly to empirically validate these revised scales. Through a survey of 63 UK Construction related SMEs, this study empirically refines and validates 10 constructs for TQM in construction. The constructs refined in this study are compared with other major quality measurement instruments. The study reports on the operational framework of Total Quality-Self Monitoring and Assessment Rating Tool (TQ-SMART) which can be used to examine the levels of quality management initiatives within UK construction related SMEs. The findings indicate that TQ-SMART is both reliable and valid. This paper concludes by presenting the refined instrument which contributes to the performance improvement tools and techniques as advocated by the Egan (1998; 2002) reports and contributes to the TQM literature by validating the direct and indirect relations among the TQM practices on organisational performance.
| Item Type: | Conference Paper (Paper) |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | total quality management; small and medium size enterprises; questionnaires; validation |
| Index terms: | critical success factor, quality management, performance improvement, monitoring, organizational performance, questionnaire, validation, survey, motivation, total quality management |
| Subjects: | control systems, data collection methods, evaluation methods, psychology, professional development, performance measurement, quality assurance |
| Topics: | Information Management, Project Management, Research Practice, Site Management, Human Resources, Quality Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here