ABSTRACT
Quality is a key determinant in satisfying customers in the sport and leisure industries, as in other industries. Whether managing in the commercial, public or voluntary sectors, people have to be attracted to the services and facilities and these should be managed with excellence – that is, with quality. But quality does not just happen. It has to be worked for. It has to be managed. Deming is renowned as the first guru of total quality management (TQM). TQM concerns a shared vision among all in an organisation and a continuing process of organisational improvement. Deming’s quality improvement work revolutionised Japan’s industrial productivity after the Second World War. He is noted for the Deming cycle, or PDSA cycle,
a continuous quality improvement model consisting of a logical sequence of four repetitive steps – Plan, Do, Study and Act – through which continuous improvement is achieved (Deming, 1986). Another important figure in the development of quality principles is Juran, who did much to consolidate a holistic, integrated concept of quality management (Juran, 1988), with an emphasis on communication and people management, and ‘fitness for purpose’ or ‘quality’ of a product or service defined by a focus on customers. In the 1990s the popularity of quality programmes in the public sector in developed countries, including public leisure services, accelerated. This was stimulated by a number of considerations (Robinson, 2001; Williams and Buswell, 2003), including:
an increasing strategic focus on customers;●● promotion of quality management by key professional agencies;●● rising customer expectations, driven by higher service standards in commercial services;●● greater government pressure and legislation for accountability in public services.●●
The Chartered Quality Institute in the UK defines quality management as ‘an organisationwide approach to understanding precisely what customers need and consistently delivering accurate solutions within budget, on time and with the minimum loss to society’ (see ‘Useful websites’, pp. 482-3). This institute describes quality in terms of innovation and care, as indicated in Figure 17.1, which demonstrates how all-embracing the concept of quality is. Robinson (2004) reproduces definitions for a number of other terms important in quality management:
quality●● – how consistently the product or service delivered meets or exceeds the customer’s expectations and needs (from Clarke, 1992);
quality control●● – the operational techniques and activities that are used to fulfil requirements for quality (from BSI, 1987); quality assurance●● – all the planned and systematic actions necessary to provide confidence that a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality (from BSI, 1987).
