College and Research Libraries Editorial Improving Quality: Organizational Benefits of Total Quality Management My last editorial advocated im- proving the quality of articles submitted to the journal by a voiding several com- mon foibles. Now I want to share some ideas about improving organizational quality through the use of total quality management thinking in the organiza- tion. Last year Don Riggs wrote an edi- torial about the benefits of total quality management for running an effective li- brary. Penn State University is also actively involved in quality work through a Con- tinuous Quality Improvement (CQI) pro- gram using the Oregon State model for process analysis. Our experiences are generalizable to other institutions and an- swer the "so what'' question about the value of total quality management. Two specific benefits of CQI thinking are team initiative and customer focus. Team initiative: Uncertain and falling state support has caused many institu- tions to examine priorities. Planning for a 10 percent cut encouraged Penn State library administrators to examine opera- tions carefully. This impetus, combined with the promotion of the chief for acqui- sitions to an associate dean's position in another university, provided an oppor- tunity for reorganizing the acquisitions department. Instead of making a pre- dictable change in internal structure, CQI thinking necessitated consultation with the owners of the process-the staff in acquisitions. In a half-day facilitated working ses- sion, the staff generated many innova- tive ideas. This group had already identified a number of redundant and outdated processes. Now they settled into the question of how their whole en- 370 terprise might operate. Two breakout groups generated the idea of self- directed work teams, while other groups addressed a lack of staff empowerment. As the name suggests, a self-directed work team is "a highly trained, com- mitted team of employees fully re- sponsible for turning out a final product or service." 1 The team eventually man- ages the work assigned to it through agreement rather than from the direc- tions of a supervisor. Most of the staff had attended total quality management introductory lectures, which probably provided the seed for this idea. Eventu- ally, almost the whole department either endorsed the self-directed work team idea or expressed a willingness to try it. Becausestaffhadonlya vague concep- tion of what the acquisitions librarians did, their suggestions about departmental governance were more predictable. Librarian managers need to communi- cate the nature of their special organiza- tional contributions more clearly, as Larry R. Oberg has noted in his work on paraprofessionals.2 Working to prepare a finished recommendation on reorgani- zation, the Penn State Libraries' Human Resources Manager Nancy Slaybaugh, the university's specialist on organiza- tional design Anita Schmidt, and I de- cided to initiate team management by asking the order librarians, receiving librarian, and approval plan librarian to form an Acquisitions Management Team that would assume the duties of the chief for acquisitions. The risks were considerable: To whom would staff report? Who would be "responsible"? How would the teamparticipate in more general library governance? With whom would vendors work? Who would coordinate with col- lection development, cataloging, and campuses? How exactly would day-to- day problems be resolved? One of my mentor's repeated observations that a library is not a hospital emergency room and reassured me that all these problems could be solved. The advantages were compelling. If three librarians who had adopted an every-woman-for-herself approach to the interim period could forge a team, the remainder of the acquisitions depart- ment would realize that they, too, could make a transition to team management. The libraries would gain three people who were thoroughly trained in all acquisitions issues as well as in the dynamics of team management. Any one of them could assume leadership in a difficult situa- tion. The libraries and the university would have another example of the principle of CQI empowerment at work. The salary from the chief's posi- tion could be contributed to the im- pending cut. The transition is difficult. Schmidt's aggressive training program for the new team members has only begun. Becom- ing a team is a mystery-time-consum- ing, emotionally taxing, and somewhat frightening. As they did with CQI, the staff has taken a wait-and-see attitude. Building trust is an incremental process, and some are impatient. Yet many others are optimistic. Empowering staff, reduc- ing management layers, and streamlin- ing operations are CQI objectives that can add quality through alternative or- ganizational solutions. Customer focus: Many of the processes initially undergoing CQI review here are ones whose customers are internal. For instance, preorder searching has acquisi- tions and selectors as its customers. This team and others (serials check-in, materi- als budget invoices, equipment ordering, wage payroll, campus added-volume mark- ing, and faculty recruitment processes) have focused on increasing efficiencies in- Editorial 371 ternally, eventually to serve users-stu- dents, faculty, staff, and others-better. In the past, some internal customer needs have been aggrandized, misinterpreted, and immortalized. Changing procedures without the analytical framework of total quality management has allowed unnec- essary steps to be perpetuated. CQI review identifies these anachronisms, and teams move through a process of quick fixes that can return needed resources to the organization. Organizations regularly engaging in quality exercises seek the opinions of ex- ternal customers, too. Even when we are not engaged in a formal CQI endeavor, we think in terms of customer needs. Too often libraries do not know what the customer wants or needs. Our students report in surveys that they want more books to be on the shelf, but will they, and the faculty, accept a shorter loan period to accomplish that? What are stu- dents' needs for information about due dates? What would be student reaction to a self-charge system? How can stu- dents become more empowered to recall materials desired? As the College & Research Libraries edi- tor, I regularly urge a more aggressive approach to research in librarianship; too few of our decisions are based on data. Total quality management brings that research/knowing approach into the arena of daily library processes. Communicating with both internal and external customers helps to maximize our effectiveness in this area. Emphases on team initiative and on understanding customer needs have helped the Penn State Libraries to respond to the strains of shrinking resources. In addition to the revised processes that re- sult from structured total quality manage- ment work, we have also realized benefits from applying quality principles to other organizational problems. As in writing articles for this journal, selecting problems that need solving and using innovative approaches to them can im- prove library quality. GLORIANA ST. CLAIR 372 College & Research Libraries September 1993 REFERENCES AND NOTES 1. Linda Moran and Ed Musselwhite, Self-Directed Work Teams: A Lot More Than Just Team Work, (San Jose, Calif.: Zenger-Miller, 1993), 1. 2. See Larry R. Oberg, "Guest Editorial," College & Research Libraries 52(Jan. 1991): 3-4; "The Emergence of the Paraprofessional in Academic Libraries: Perceptions and Reali- ties," College & Research Libraries 53(Mar. 1992): 99-112; and Larry R. Oberg, Mark E. Mentges, P.N. McDermott, and Vitoon Harusadangkul,"The Role, Status, and Working Conditions of Paraprofessionals: A National Survey of Academic Libraries," College & Research Libraries 53(May 1992): 215-38. CRL900ZCD Announcing Zoological Record on CD. New From BIOSiseand SilverPiatte~ Zoological Record, the world-renowned source for access to animal research literature, will be available on CD-ROM technology in October. call today lor more Information! Ask about our 30-day free trial for Zoological Record on Compact Disc n.c. 1·800·523·4808 (USA and Canada) 1215] 587·4847 (Worldwide) f:) BIOSJS• Information for Today's Decisions and Discoveries BIOS IS is a registered trademarlc of Biological Abstncts, Inc. 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