Growth through quality and productivity

Prof Dinesh P Chapagain


Japan is the first country in the world to show that a sustainable national economic growth is possible through maintaining quality. The notion of quality first, productivity follows and profit is its logical sequence expressed by many business houses of Japan in the 1960s helped the country attain a continuous national economic growth of two digits for nearly three decades. Later, when the Western countries adopted this philosophy of 'quality first', their economic growth also increased. The white-crane syndrome of the philosophy then began to evolve in Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and later, in the 1990s, in other newly industrialised countries of South-East Asian.
From the turn of the century, China and India are exhibiting similar stupendous growth rates as those countries. They are also applying the same strong notion of 'quality first' as the prime movers in all respect. The issues of quality strategy to cope with new environment and the aims and goals considered are derived from the stakeholder model of quality.
At the micro level, an organization strives to develop its competitiveness by enhancing quality and productivity. Similarly, at the macro level, the national economic growth depends on the strategy the nation takes towards the direction of increasing competitiveness of all social and economic sectors through quality and productivity. Some Western critics have written about Japan Inc. and Singapore Inc. They draw analogies between these countries and incorporated companies adopting the strategy of 'coopetitiveness' (Cooperation and Competition) and collaboration, that is, the government and private sector working together for their overall respective developments. The strategy is an extended version of the stakeholder model of quality at the macro level. The nation accepting the concept of building relationships among all stakeholders to take an overall win-win strategy for creating synergy for national development will definitely achieve its economic developmental goals.
It is difficult, but it is absolutely important to understand the concept of the stakeholder model and to accept the strategy of networking for building relationships between all social and economic stakeholders in the country for economic development.
Looking from the quality perspective, the social and economic sectors of a country can be listed as; agriculture sector, manufacturing sector, financial sector, infrastructure and utility sector, health sector, education sector, and social development sector. Whereas, the major players and partners of these sectors are always -- government policymakers and administrators as regulators and facilitators, private business houses as investors and operators --civil societies as watch dogs, facilitators and motivators, and individuals as producers, service providers as well as consumers.
It is indeed an arduous task to establish correct interconnection among the different stakeholders for national development activities by conceiving quality as the prime mover. The aims and purposes of different stakeholders may be different and sometimes conflicting. We have to identify them and properly understand the conflicting differences. If we were to focus on a win-win strategy whereby all stakeholders are to benefit, which no doubt is a prime mission of any quality movement; it is possible to intensify the economic growth we are talking about. This is what we call 'networking for quality'.