Пойгина Л.Б., Туринова Л.А. - English for Masters. Management Part 1 (1175658), страница 9
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This aspect of quality is well understood by U.S.managers. However, they have not always acted on this knowledge as well as the Japanesebecause they overlooked or underestimated the external component of quality.Like everything related to organizations, quality is contingent upon rectors, outsidethe organization. First and foremost, what matters is not pure performance of the output, buthow well the output meets the needs of the organization's customers. This, in turn, is afunction of many interacting forces. Who the customer is and how the output will be used areperhaps the most significant and obvious factors. A digital, computerized mixing systemused by modern recording studios reproduces sound to a degree approaching perfection. Noteven the most enthusiastic Hi-Fi consumer would consider spending their extra $1 millionsuch perfection costs when a good cassette deck with no audible distortion can be purchasedfor a few hundred dollars.
A recording company, in contrast, would not consider the simplehome deck a saving because the epitome of quality is needed to survive in its highlycompetitive business.27 Productivity, Value, and Quality. Consumers of both goods and services, whether theyare individuals or as large as General Motors, are concerned not with perfection, but withvalue. Value is a function of appropriate performance and price. It is value that definesquality. Therefore, as Riggs and Felix state: "Sacrificing quality is an easy way to boost thequantity, of output, but it seldom increases the value of the output Productivity is a measureof value".Value, in the sense of quality, is relative.
The consumer compares the output to that ofcompeting organizations, to alternative goods or services that meet the same need, and tooutput of the organization itself in the past. Nor are consumers objective in determiningvalue. Perception, which may be affected by such intangibles as what enhances status, playsan important role. A Mercedes Benz, judging from its consistent popularity increases, isconsidered a good value, even though its performance and durability are not objectivelysuperior to that of some less expensive luxury cars. Perceived quality can actually boostobjective value. The perceived value of a Mercedes, for example, causes its resale price as apercentage of original cost to be higher than average.
A poor perception of quality, asAmerican auto makers have discovered to t he i r chagrin, can be difficult to overcome,however much inherent quality has been improved.Related to the concept of perceived value is the issue of detect level In general,American business tried for an "acceptable" level of defects, a reasonably low percentage ofunits produced. But to the individual buying a product there is only one acceptable level: nodefects. Moreover, people are far more l i k e l y to complain to anyone who will listen about aproblem than they are to speak well of a product that gave no hassles. Thus, even a relativelysmall percentage of defects can snowball into a negative image. That most successfulJapanese companies have long had a policy of striving for zero defects has surely played animportant role in building the image of perceived quality now enjoyed by Japaneseelectronics and autos.
Even though perfection is probably unobtainable, striving for it seemsto be worth the added cost.Productivity and Organizational Interdependence. One of the most important and mostoverlooked aspects of our model of productivity is the link between inputs and outputs. Theoutputs of one organization pass through the environment and eventually become the inputsof other organizations. In a world which, in the words of Drucker has become a "society oforganizations," this has enormous ramifications. Because our organizations areinterdependent low productivity in a major component of the economy causes lowerproductivity in many areas. The more direct the environment connection, the more direct theimpact on productivity.
Low-quality components from a supplier directly reduce theproductivity of the purchasing organization. Losses instead of profits mean that less capital isavailable for even successful businesses to invest in productivity. Low productivity ingovernment leads to higher than necessary taxes, which drain funds that could be used toimprove productivity.The transformation process always has both negative and positive outputs. Positiveoutputs include quality goods or services, profit and employment.
Potential negative outputsinclude defects, losses, and unemployment, which maybe positive for the organization butnegative for the community. Almost all important managerial decisions, even though highlypositive overall, have some negative consequences. Improving productivity within a specificorganization, for example, sometimes results in the elimination of jobs either within theorganization or in related industries as a whole. In determining relative productivity,managers have to deduct the direct costs of negative outputs to determine true output.Obviously, defective goods or services cannot be counted as part of "output" in computingthe productivity ratio. Less obvious are the indirect affects of negative outputs.28 International Competition.
Business today is increasingly multinational. Many ofthe countries with which U.S. companies compete are not experiencing all of the problemsaffecting productivity described above to the same degree. In addition, their labor costs maybe lower and their technology as good as.
if not better than, that of U.S. firms. Because of theresulting higher productivity, the foreign firms may have a significant competitive advantage.When coupled with a recessionary economy, in which overall demand is down, the lessproductive organizations may suffer serious losses. A good example is the comparison ofU.S. and Japanese car manufactures.American organizations present concern with managing productivity was strongly stimulatedby the combination of increased international competition and the recessionary economiccycle.
The recession naturally meant an overall decrease in demand for new cars. At the sametime foreign auto makers had a significant productivity advantage. Toyota, for example, usedonly 1.6 days of labor per car, the Germans 2.7 days, and the Americans 3.8 days. Theoverall production advantage of the Japanese over General Motors was $1000to $1700 percar.
Only about $450 of this was due to wage and benefit differences. Most of the increasedproductivity came from efficient use of statistical process control, automation, robotics,superior inventory control, and a more committed work force. The advantage was felt both interms of price and improved quality, and the foreign share of the U.S. auto market increaseddramatically, magnifying the already bad effects of the recession.Productivity and the Internal Environment. Managers whose organizations sufferedproductivity declines, lost market share to foreign competition, were unable to earn profits, orwere forced into massive layoffs or even bankruptcy during the late 1970s blamed outsideforces "out of their control." Some stopped waving the banner of private enterprise longenough to ask government for protection against "unfair" foreign competition, subsidies, bans,"irrational" levels of competition due to deregulation of their industries. Were these excusesjustified? Not very often.These external factors certainly had a negative impact on productivity.
Someorganizations did suffer more than others. But in general, though the environment may beharsh it is quite fair: organizations and their direct competitors are equally subject to forces inthe external environment. The way management responds to these forces, however, makesorganizations unequal in productivity.The external environment only determines the ground rules of the productivity game.The internal environment—created by countless management decisions (and indecision) —determines who wins.Japanese industry was hurt much more by rising energy costs than U.S.
industrybecause it is totally dependent on imported oil and has to transport most of its products andraw materials across thousands of miles of oceans. Japan may be enjoying the competitiveadvantages that come with being the market leader, but U.S. business had the edge fordecades longer. It also started the world Monopoly game with a lot more money thanJapanese business. Yet, despite these disadvantages, Japan somehow managed to achieve thehighest rate of productivity growth in the world.The key word in the preceding sentence is managed.
It is not "unfair" that Japanesebusinesses now have a big head start in the race for higher productivity. Their managers heardthe starting gun two decades ago and started running as fast as they could. Far too many oftheir American counterparts, assuming they had already won the race, thought the noise wasjust a backfire and ignored it. Embarrassing as it is to admit, American managers have toaccept the fact that their Japanese counterparts beat them at their own game, often usingconcepts and technologies developed in the United States.29 Do the changes in the external environment described above mean that Americanbusiness is doomed to decline? Hardly.
What makes the excuses for its failure even lessconvincing is that the Japanese are not the only ones to have improved productivity rapidlyduring that period. And, although average productivity declined relative to other countries,some American firms achieved spectacular productivity gains during that period. Not eventhe stars of Japanese industries surpass such American firms as IBM, McDonald's, HewlettPackard, and Procter &Gamble, whose achievements are analyzed in Peters and Waterman's"InSearch of Excellence ". The many successes of American organizations in bucking the tideof low productivity prove that sustained productivity growth can be achieved through goodmanagementIf management is to provide the leadership necessary to increase productivity andquality of life in these, changing times, it cannot view itself as simply a catalytic agent thatalters other elements while remaining unchanged itself.
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