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Total Quality Management Implementation Failure Reasons in Healthcare Sector



Author(s)

Nicolas Nicolaou, George Kentas

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DOI:10.17265/2328-7136/2017.02.007

Although TQM’s advantages and benefits have been identified by the literature, the ways to achieve them continue to remain complex. Nevertheless, in many cases TQM failure is not due to vague and ambiguous procedures, but for certain reasons. We conduct an in-depth literature review from peer reviewed journals regarding Total Quality Management (TQM) implementation failure reasons only for healthcare sector. A comparative analysis for TQM implementation failure reasons was conducted in order to identify the most common. The most common TQM implementation failure reasons in healthcare sector are lack of management commitment, change of culture, quality tools and techniques not applied correctly, not adequate time for implementation, lack of resources and information, data validity, cost of investment, management’s resistance to empower employees and professional’s resistance. Most of studies in TQM concern successful implementation in hospitals, clinics and health organizations. Our literature review showed that very few studies in the literature focus on failure reasons of TQM implementation. This study can help healthcare managers to study each failure reason separately and proceed to appropriate actions in order to avoid possible TQM implementation failure. The novelty of this paper is that failure reasons of TQM implementation concern only healthcare sector.

TQM failure reasons, TQM obstacles, healthcare