Creating a Culture of Quality To Benefit Compliance

Harvey and Green (1993), outlined the nature of quality culture, which was seen, at the time, as a function of the manufacturing industry: “A culture of quality is one in which everybody in the organization, not just the quality controllers, is responsible for quality.  A central feature of such organizations is that each worker or team of workers is both a customer of, and supplier to, other workers in the organization: they form a chain of internal customers and suppliers. It is the responsibility of each unit to ensure the quality of their own work.   The emphasis is on ensuring that things are ‘done right first time’. When they are not, then the process that has led to an unsatisfactory output is analyzed so that corrections can be made in the process to ensure that the problem does not arise again. In a quality culture, there is no need to check final output. Indeed, to do so, is to shift responsibility away from those involved at each stage.”