A Rough Set Based Total Quality Management Approach in Higher Education - Complex System Modelling and Control Through Intelligent Soft Computations - page 386

Employees are internal customers in any organization (Sallis 2002 ) and quality of
that organization cannot be improved without the satisfaction of their employees
(Ooi et al. 2007 ). Becket and Brookes ( 2008 ) undertakes a critical evaluation of the
different methods used to assess the quality of provision in higher education
departments in the UK. Al-Tarawneh ( 2011 ) studies the role of management in
higher education institutions and for implementing TQM in universities which need
the participation of all to ensure survival and continuity of universities.
Manjula et al. ( 2012 ) propose a new capability maturity decision making model
based on rough computing for extracting key process areas and its relevance for the
development of quality education.
Andollo et al. ( 2013 ) examined the in uence of training and empowerment and

effective communication as an aspect of quality management system on service
provision.
Acharjya and Bhattacharjee ( 2013 ) propose a performance evaluation for edu-
cational institutions using rough set on fuzzy approximation spaces with ordering
rules and information entropy. In order to measure the performance of educational
institutions, they construct an evaluation index system.
The study conducted by Altahayneh ( 2014 ) indicated that TQM principles were
poorly implemented in Jordanian colleges of physical education and the

fl

findings
revealed that academic rank, years of experience, and education level did not
significantly affect the faculty members ' perceptions of TQM implementation.

3 A Systemic View of TQM

A comprehensive examination of TQM literature provides an insight into major
quality improvement parameters like, strategic planning, customer focus, leadership,
information analysis, process management, supplier management, and human
resource management (Sila 2007 ). This is a macro view on TQM practices in various
organizations most of which are manufacturing or production based organizations.
Another view on TQM states that it is an integration of all organizational functional
areas such as marketing, finance, production, human resource, design, engineering,

so that customer need and organizational objectives can be synchronized (Hung
2007 ). There is another extremely interesting interpretation of TQM which high-
lights TQM as a system of three inter related and interdependent components,
namely, values, methodologies, and tools that are used tighter to enhance the sat-
isfaction of internal as well as external customers (Hellsten and Klefsjo 2000 ). This
view is important in the light of fact that education institutions have faculty as
internal customers and students as external customers. Deming

'

s 14 TQM
principles (see Table 1 ) provides a general direction to any organization for
improving overall quality in most holistic fashion but these principles need to be
reengineered when applying them to professional higher education sector.
Organization lacking a democratic culture and participative management style
may not be perfect candidate for applying TQM, moreover, if the organization is