CHURCH AWARENESS AND PRACTICE OF TOTAL QUALITY ...

year, TQM is focused on medium to long term benefits, thereby ensuring constant
improvement over time.”
2.1:5 Quality Circles: These are Japanese approach to quality which they started in Japan
after the second world way. A Quality Circle offers participatory management
opportunity to employees. It is a worker motivator that creates a working climate of trust.
Glover (1993) and Ouchi (1981), said “first, however, employees must sense a climate of
trust before they can offer maximum commitment to TQM. A climate of trust permits
employees to be sold on a project.” Kelvin Wilson-Smith, TQM manager at Gestetner in
an e-library printable article (2002) said “this model has allowed Gestetner to improve its
offering on all fronts. Since implementing the TQM methodology, we have found it a
practical driving tool, inspiring employees to improve upon both processes and service.”
John S. Oakland (1989, P252) defines quality circle “as a group of workers doing similar
work who meet voluntarily, regularly, in normal working time, under the leadership of
their supervisor, to identify, analyze, and solve work related problems and to recommend
solutions to management.”
Oakland thinks that where it is possible, members of a quality circle should be allowed to
carry out their own recommendations. Why? because the commitment will be there to
implement and see to it that maximum “profits” are obtained there from.
However, Kit Sadgrove (1995, P78) observed that quality circles are not labour unions;
as such they cannot discuss pay and conditions of service because these are meant to be
negotiated. They can also not discuss individual people because personnel problems must
be handled professionally. “Everything else is suitable,” he said. In the Church setting in
Nigeria, quality circles are represented by what is called committees or groups of various
types with various names from denomination to denomination. Thus we have “harvest
committee,” building committee,” “special project committee,” “counseling committee,”
“hospitality committee” and so on and so forth. Each of these committees works for the
interest of all, some of them like the “progress committee” and “prayer committee” work
continuously year in year out. Each committee makes recommendations to the Church
Leadership who takes final decisions and executes such decisions sometimes through the
committees or by themselves.
2.1:6 Beyond Quality: Before the present hyper philosophies and sometimes-complex
complications which competitive activities have fostered on the world, it used to be
simple production based on some possible measure of quality. Measure of quality kept
through simple quality control observations. But that has since become history.
The industrial temperature has almost read up all the degrees on the thermometer! That
makes the arrival of TQM a great human discovery and its fire is catching on more and
more worldwide. Byrne, 1992, Gagne, 1983, Lowe et al, 1986 all agree that “TQM
provides a paradigm shift in management philosophy for improving organizational
effectiveness.” One of the tools of TQM for effective working is beyond quality concept.
An organization will say to itself and staff that for our product or service to beat
competition and keep us in business continuously, we must daze the customers beyond