Enhancing Total Quality Management by Partnering in Construction
Publication: Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 135, Issue 4
Abstract
Total quality management (TQM) has increasingly been introduced into the construction industry across many countries as an improvement strategy, but there are many barriers impeding its effectiveness in implementation. Many researchers pointed out that partnering can facilitate TQM application, yet the quintessential nature on the linkage between the two techniques is still not clear due to a lack of rigorous verifiable empirical evidence. With support of the data collected from a survey of the Chinese construction industry, together with a case study of the Three Gorges Dam Project, this study reveals the mechanism of how partnering, associated with incentives, can enhance the implementation of TQM into the construction industry. It is concluded that partnering can enhance TQM largely due to enhancing the links across the boundaries of organizations within a trust environment; and the impacts of incentives on TQM are through both aligning strong motivations to encourage participants using the established links efficiently and aligning the necessary financial resources for participants to directly assist the investment on improving TQM. Further studies should be conducted to build optimum links and alignments among all project participants to ensure intraorganizational TQM activities are congruent with the interorganizational interactions, which require future project organizations to change in order to fit this.
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks are given to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. NNSFC50539130 and NNSFC70671058), SRF for ROCS of the State Education Ministry, the Chinese Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. UNSPECIFIED2005037370), the MIRS, and MIFRS of the University of Melbourne for financial support. Special thanks are also given to Ertan Hydropower Development Company Ltd and those respondents for their generous contributions during the survey.
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Published In
Journal of Professional Issues in Engineering Education and Practice
Volume 135 • Issue 4 • October 2009
Pages: 129 - 141
Copyright
© 2009 ASCE.
History
Received: Oct 11, 2007
Accepted: Mar 20, 2009
Published online: Sep 15, 2009
Published in print: Oct 2009
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