Emerging Quality Management Issues and Challenges

Emerging quality management issues and challenges ensures that an organization, product, or service is consistent. It has four main components: quality planning, quality control, quality assurance, and quality improvement. Quality management is focused not only on product and service quality but also on the means to achieve it. Quality management, therefore, uses quality assurance and control of processes as well as products to achieve more consistent quality. Some of the Emerging quality management issues and challenges are below:

1. Globalization

The globalization phenomenon is getting popular these days. Globalization of business refers to the free flow of goods service, technology, labor, capital information, across the national boundary; it is closer economic integration among different countries in terms of the flow of good service, capital-labor, and technology. Globalization is the tendency of expanding business in different countries. Managers have to work in a boundary-less world. There is no territory or barrier in export and import business. Globalization invites global competition. Organizations that were competing locally with local competitors now have to compete with global competitors. It is very difficult for the organization to survive and develop in such a situation. Organizations should increase the quality of products and reduce cost which is a challenge for managers.

2. Workforce diversity

Modern organizations are characterized by workforce diversity. A diversified workforce is the reality of business these days. Organizations are becoming heterogeneous in terms of ethnicity, gender, nationality, age group, etc. People having different religions, different nationality works together under one roof. Different people have different nature and they show different behavior because they come from different backgrounds. How to manage such a diversified workforce is a great challenge for managers. If such a diversified workforce is managed properly, the organization will be highly benefited because they also bring diversified skills and knowledge. But, if they are not managed properly, they create a serious problem.

3. Quality assurance and productivity

Quality is the ability of the product to satisfy customers’ needs. How to improve the quality of the product or how to assure customers about the quality of the product has become a great challenge for management. Quality ensures organizations’ survival and growth. Organizations use quality to compete with competitors. Only improving the quality of product organizations can face global competition. Therefore, there must be continuous improvement in quality. Quality improvement has no boundary. It is the race without the final line. It is said that people buy quality, not products. And, to improve quality is really a challenge for management. Along, with increasing quality to increase productivity again is another challenge for management. An organization must try to achieve higher productivity.

4. Technological advancement

How to utilize advanced and sophisticated technology has become another challenge for management. Technology has developed beyond the expectation of anybody in the world over the last 100 years. Tremendous advancement has been made in production, distribution, and information technology. Managers must manage all this technology with the development of the computer, the face of information technology has absolutely changed. Introduction of the internet, email, and other electronic media have benefitted organizations in the field of productions, distribution, and other areas of business. Decision making has been facilitated by information technology. Technological advancement has changed the nature of the job.

5. Ethics and social responsibility

Ethics is a study of how our decisions affect other people. It is the study of people’s rights and duties. The moral rules the people to make decisions and the nature of the relationship among people. Ethics is to follow the social code of conduct, social norms, values, and attitude. The decisions made by managers have a broad reach both inside and outside the organization. So, managers must follow ethical norms and consider social responsibilities. The managerial decision must be based on ethical ground. But, these days ethics id\s decreasing in the business world. So, many business organizations have unethical practices. Because of the unethical practice of some business houses, all business world is blamed.

6. Innovation and change

Management must pay attention to innovation and change. Otherwise, they would go out of business. Rapid innovations are taking place in technology, product, and service. The product lifecycle is getting shorter and shorter. The product needs continuous improvement if the life span is to be made long. New ideas, new techniques, new methods are being innovated; there must be new inventions of ideas, a new invention of product. The old and outdated product cannot satisfy customers. There is a change in the external environment, political and legal, socio-cultural, economic, and technological environments change rapidly.

7. Empowerment

This is the age of empowerment. The role difference between management and workers has narrowed down. The status between workers and managers is very narrow. Most of the decisions are taken at the operating level. Workers are free to plan and schedule their work. They are given more and more autonomy and freedom. They participate in major decision-making activities. Joint goal setting and joint performance evaluation have become common. Self-managed work team had been established, more and more information is given to employees, and how to manage such empower team has become a challenge for managers.