DEVELOPMENT OF GLOBAL QUALITY ORGANIZATIONS BY QUALITY MANAGEMENT PRACTICES : A CASE STUDY

Abstract

Quality is a vital component in today’s business and its continuous improvement is in the strategic interest of any organization pushing to improve their value proposition. However, quality organizations can face challenges with plateauing development in this context. This study focuses on the quality development work done in companies’ quality organizations. More specifically, the study analyses the challenges of value creation and continuous improvement in quality development as a qualitative single case study.

There is limited academic evidence available on how earlier mentioned situations could be countered and resolved. Hence, the purpose of this thesis is to advance the understanding on quality development plateauing, the reasons for it, and how organizations can manage with it by conducting a case study in the case organization. A side contribution is to seek potentially supportive findings that could aid companies to improve further their quality organizations.

A literature review is presented regarding value creation, continuous improvement, as well as quality management systems. After this, an empirical study of a quality organization from the Finnish technology industry will be introduced. Information gathered from the case organization via interviews, observations, document and records analysis, as well as work experience was then compared to the findings done in the literature review section.

The results suggest that the implementation of quality management practices contribute positively into the value creation of a global quality organization. They can also help in the prevention of development stagnation. As a theoretical contribution the existing literature, an implementation model for quality development practices is presented. Finally, further study prospects and limitations of the work are introduced.