Pay, Rewards and Recognition: Managing Quality in a Small Firm

Abstract

In this chapter we examine the case of a small firm — Richer Sounds — and the manner in which it seeks to manage its culture to create a customer-focused, quality-orientated organisation. In particular we examine the way it uses its payment system to support the desired quality culture. TQM writers stress the need to create a new corporate culture but are rather imprecise as to how this is to be achieved. As Seddon points out ‘all the literature on TQM indicates that to be successful TQM requires a cultural change. That’s usually where the literature stops’ (1990:81). For example a recent TQM text states that:

A considerable thought needs to be given to facilitating and managing cultural change. Changing people’s beliefs and attitudes is one of the most difficult tasks facing management, who must develop their own powers and skills of motivation and persuasion. (Dale and Cooper, 1992: 20).