Mick is a project manager at Zarlink, a multinational manufacturer of semiconductors for a variety of high-technology military, medical and consumer applications. Mick is also a part-time MBA student at his local university. As part of his MBA, Mick has to complete a dissertation on a management topic of his choice. Since Mick had recently been selected to embed a new quality management system called TS 16949 into his manufacturing site at Swindon in the West of England it seemed sensible that he chose to study quality for his dissertation. Mick’s particular fascination was his firm belief that the route to high-quality process in organizations was not through introducing specific techniques but through ensuring that quality was embedded in everything done at Zarlink: part of the lifeblood of the organization. ‘Quality is even about more than people’s attitudes’ said Mick; ‘it’s about their beliefs. Quality must be a way of life and dominate the thoughts of everyone in the organization, irrespective of their job.’ Mick wanted to use his dissertation as a way not only of obtaining his MBA but also of learning how he could be more effective in introducing embedded quality at Swindon.

Mick started off his research by searching the quality literature. There was no shortage of this. But soon Mick realized that he was concerned with that branch of the quality literature that dealt with the ‘soft’ issues of organizational culture change. He became rather disenchanted with much of the literature because it was largely prescriptive. ‘I was dubious about a lot of what the gurus were saying,’ said Mick. ‘They seemed to be saying that if you get your employees to believe this and do that then everything will be fine. I was skeptical of this because I knew through my MBA studies that the success of certain techniques is usually contingent upon the individual circumstances of the organization.’ Nonetheless Mick became attracted to the idea that embedding certain core values in the organization was a good way of achieving quality goals. The problem was that he did not know which core values were appropriate for his site. Therefore his research question became: ‘What are the core values that need to be adopted in Zarlink, Swindon, if embedded quality is to become a success?’

More specifically, Mick’s research objectives were:

to identify general constructs that constitute ‘embedding quality’ within an organization;

to compare these beliefs with those espoused by a sample from the senior Zarlink Management team;

to establish the behaviors and attitudes of the current workforce towards the quality management system at the Zarlink foundry, Swindon;

to propose a framework of core values to facilitate the embedding of quality into Zarlink, Swindon.

Having used the literature to refine his research question and objectives Mick then turned his attention to collecting primary data within Zarlink. Initially he thought of using a positivist approach based on a questionnaire using qualitative data, but discussions with Philippa, his tutor, convinced him that there were other ways of collecting data. Mick began to think more deeply about his research strategy, and thought that the advantage of triangulating his data by using multi-method would convince not only his examiners that his data were valid but also the managers at Zarlink who he was hoping would give him the go-ahead to introduce his ideas.

Mick’s first research objective had been met by his coverage of the literature. This had been useful in concentrating his mind on embedded quality, but it only took him a limited way. The second and third objectives would lead to a much more meaningful management dissertation.

The second objective involved conducting interviews with key managers in order to ‘test’ the ideas that Mick had developed about core values as a result of the literature review. The managerial sample he chose comprised managers from other Zarlink sites in the world who had an excellent reputation for embedding quality. At the same time Mick thought it important to include those managers who were concerned with implementing quality at Swindon. Mick conducted six interviews across three sites: one in Canada and one in southern England in addition to the third in Swindon. In each site he interviewed the foundry director and the quality manager. These were the key managers concerned with quality. The non-Swindon managers were interviewed by telephone, and the Swindon managers were interviewed face to face by Mick. He hoped this phase of data collection would give him a very clear idea of Zarlink’s view of quality.

In order to meet the third objective he decided to collect data in two ways. The first was to conduct what he called a ‘gap analysis. The purpose of this was to establish the current behaviors concerned with quality – that is, what people actually did in their working lives. This would tell Mick what was being done well and what was being done badly, or not at all, and therefore identify what needed to be done to embed quality. In order to do this Mick designed an audit form based on a purpose-made audit that had been used before in similar organizations. This was administered in all departments of Zarlink, Swindon. Ten of Mick’s colleagues were responsible for carrying out the audit. This involved Mick in training them in its use in order to achieve reliability. Mick was opportunistic in the second way he collected data in respect of the third objective. He was fortunate that a general employee attitude survey was imminent. He decided to insert a subsection in this survey that consisted of questions to establish employees’ attitudes to quality. This went to each of the 130 employees at Swindon.

Mick was confident that his research strategy would yield rich, valid and reliable data on management beliefs and employee attitudes and practice, which would enable him to propose a framework of core values to facilitate the embedding of quality into Zarlink, Swindon. This would enable him to make a valuable contribution to the well-being of Zarlink and pass his MBA!

1. In what other ways could Mick have used the literature to refine his research question? ( at least 200 words)

2. In what other ways might Mick have achieved his research aim? (at least 200 words)