The Human Factor in Quality: Examining the ISO 9000 and Business Excellence Frameworks in Selected Greek Organizations

Introduction

The word quality in recent year is becoming very popular among organizations and academics and it is widely used in annual reports, in advertisement and even in government initiatives all over the world. However, although the true meaning and the value of quality is gaining ground in all over the world, the figures said a different story. Organizations are facing enormous quality problems in production (defects, scrap), in marketing (customer satisfaction), in logistics (response time, reliability), in finance (quality costs) and in most of their functions, even though the “Quality Revolution” has started according to many authors long time ago.

Having that in mind it is obvious that there is an oxymoron in the quality literature. Some authors argue that quality is about rhetoric and good stories in order for organizations to promote sales and create a “customer-orientation” profile. In United States and in Europe awards were established to promote awareness and provide a basis and a model for TQM implementation. However, the organizations both in US and in Europe were not so enthusiastic about the awards and the numbers are very small in all categories. On the other hand the certification with the new ISO 90000:2000 series of standards is gaining ground and especially in Asia the increase in certified organizations is beyond expectations. But still, many authors state that ISO 9000 is not equal to Total Quality Management but is just a third part quality audit that is not related to final product quality mainly used by organizations as a commercial tool. So what is “right path” to quality improvement and to customer satisfaction? Why quality is so desirable but very few organizations are willing to be involved in the quality journey?

In Greece, according to Dervitsiotis (1999) quality “had been of paramount importance in Greek culture since antiquity often mentioned as “areti (virtue) by Aristotelians and was at the center of all cultural and political activities in the ancient Greek civilization. Over the last twenty years the efforts of Greek industrial organizations for quality improvement were simply focused in the use of statistical methods in the production area and the introduction of quality assurance systems certified by third party (ISO 9000 series). However, the “technical” and “process-oriented” approach seems that does not provide the basis for the establishment of company-wide quality culture that covers all functions of the organization and focus on internal and external customer satisfaction. (IPM, 1993 Blackburn&Rosen, 1992).

On the contrary, moving from a traditional quality assurance system to a new philosophy of continuous improvement in which responsibility for quality is at the hands not of quality professional but all people within the organization is a challenge for Greek Industrial organizations that external and internal conditions will force them to implement.