Study for the Power of Quality Models

Description
Study for the Power of Quality Models: The Example of the SIQ Model for Performance Excellence:- Service quality is a comparison of expectations with performance. A business with high service quality will meet customer needs whilst remaining economically competitive.[2] Improved service quality may increase economic competitiveness.

Study for the Power of Quality Models: The Example of the SIQ Model for Performance Excellence
Abstract Most contemporary Total Quality Management (TQM) practice is influenced, directly or indirectly, by structured, acontextual and standardized quality models. The present paper focuses on the strategic introduction of one such model, namely the SIQ model for Performance Excellence, in a Swedish public-sector organization, which we refer to as 'the Authority'. We take our theoretical stance from Foucault's concept of 'power/knowledge'. In describing the case, we focus on the management team of one of the Authority's ten regions. Our analysis shows the members of the management team using the SIQ model to objectify both the organization and themselves as managers. However, contrary to many critical or managerial accounts, the SIQ model was not totalizing: management subjectivities changed but were not entirely reconstituted, and some resistance to them was generated by the members of the management team, in their role as professionals.

Keywords: Organization studies, Foucault, Power/knowledge, Quality models, TQM

Introduction In management theory, efficiency and effectiveness have traditionally been seen as central concerns (Clegg, 2002; Clegg, Courpasson & Phillips, 2006; Hinings & Greenwood, 2002). The discourse of total quality management (TQM) which has been flourishing in the West since the early 1980s, has been widely used in both private and public-sector organizations to direct strategic organizational change with a view to improving efficiency (Cole, 1999). TQM discourse fosters efficiency (doing things 'right') by facilitating the creation of improved process orientation as well as effectiveness (doing the 'right' things) by facilitating an attitude of enhanced customer orientation by organizations and their members. In TQM, a customer orientation - the consideration of customer demands - provides the norms and thus the goals for which to strive, while a process orientation ensures high productivity. In addition, TQM discourse prescribes 'continuous improvements' whereby organizations can be improved on a day-to-day basis (Deming, 1986; Hackman & Wageman, 1995; Juran, 1988).

Most contemporary TQM practice is influenced, directly or indirectly, by structured, acontextual, standardized and more or less similar self-assessment frameworks (Cole, 1999) such as the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award (MBNQA), the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model and the Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ) Model for Performance Excellence. The general ideas of TQM discourse for fostering efficiency and effectiveness are embedded in these models, which have been designed for guiding and conducting practical quality development (Cole, 1999). In previous research these models have been labeled 'total quality management models' (e.g. Conti, 1999), 'business excellence models' (e.g. Lee & Dale, 1998) and 'quality models' (Hasselbladh & Knights, 2004). In the present paper we use this last term as a common signifier for these self-

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assessment models. It is important to note that it is just this kind of quality and 'excellence' models that we discuss, and not all tools bearing the TQM label.

In management theory, efficiency has usually been, implicitly or explicitly, conceptualized in opposition to power (Clegg, 2002; Clegg et al., 2006; Hinings & Greenwood, 2002). Power does not appear in TQM discourse, and thus not in the quality models either. There are no areas in the quality models that question moral issues of power or responsibility. Thus, as the Swedish experience shows, exemplary award-winning companies have not hesitated to shut down whole industries, thus destroying the labor market of an entire region. And yet they are still regarded as exemplary, on account of their efficient and effective organization.

In Power and Organizations, Clegg et al. (2006: 7, 17) do not regard 'the relation between efficiency and power as one of opposition ? efficiency and power are inextricably linked ? Power and efficiency are not two opposite sides of a continuum'. Clegg et al. (2006) argue that efficiency and power are not only central interrelated concepts in management practice: they also have to be regarded as an integral part of the fundamental concerns of management theory. Their book can in fact be said to represent the "writing" of power into management theories such as Taylorism and Human Relations that have been traditionally recognized for a preoccupation with efficiency rather than power. By reinterpreting the genealogy of management first as a theory geared to the political economy of the body, second as a theory concerned with the moral economy of the soul, and third as a discursive economy of available rationalities, Clegg et al. (2006) have repositioned power as the central theory - and practice of management. It is for this reason that an investigation of TQM and excellence models as power practices is overdue. For too long these have been observed exclusively through the

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lens of efficiency rather than of the relations and practices of power with which organizations have sought to shape efficient discipline.

While claims regarding the efficiency of TQM are frequent among the proponents of the system, a number of critical management scholars have been reluctant to take these claims for efficiency at face value (see for example Hasselbladh & Knights, 2004; Kelemen, 2000; Knights & McCabe, 1999; 2000; Munro, 1995). Among such critics TQM is approached as a discourse of power, rather then of efficiency. Despite their critical analytical interest, only one of the papers in this tradition, namely Hasselbladh & Knights (2004), addresses a structured and standardized quality model - the SIQ model for performance excellence. However, although the paper concerned does inaugurate such an analysis, it does so in a way that is empirically thin: it addresses only the normative detail of the SIQ model as such, without including empirical data from the quality development work that the SIQ model has inspired, as the authors themselves acknowledge (Hasselbladh & Knights, 2004).

The lack of critical studies explicitly focusing on the empirical analysis of quality models in practice is surprising, since most TQM work undertaken today is influenced, directly or indirectly, by such models (Cole, 1999). The models are designed to shape practice, rather than as objects to be contemplated purely in their own terms. Numerous 'success stories' concerning their implementation have been reported in the managerial research literature (see McAdam & Welsh, 2000). Many of these studies have a normative character, since they start from the assumptions built into the quality models and offer only thin empirical descriptions founded on unarticulated theoretical positions and 'officially' sanctioned accounts as evidence for the success of these models. Thus, a true believers discourse evolves, whereby those

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committed to belief in the quality models report on practices framed by, and illustrative of, their belief. Such an approach is hardly scientific.

The present paper focuses on the organizational power effects of adopting the SIQ model for Performance Excellence and develops theory concerning the way organizational relations are framed, shaped and enacted by way of such discourses. The paper draws on a two-year longitudinal qualitative study of organizational change as orchestrated by the SIQ model in a Swedish public-sector organization, here referred to as 'the Authority'. We focus on the management team of one of the Authority's ten regions. The SIQ model is the 'dominant design' (Cole, 1999) in use in Sweden and is representative of the general and standardized business excellence quality models that are in widespread use today.

As regards theory, we depart from Foucault's concept of 'power/knowledge' (see Foucualt 1977; 1981). The main reason for this choice is as we argue in a textual analysis of the SIQmodel in the second section below, and an empirical analysis in the fourth - that quality models primarily induce changes in power/knowledge rather than power grounded in agency. It was not that we started from a Foucauldian approach to analyzing the power of quality models before collecting and analyzing data. Rather, it was our initial analysis of the SIQ model and the case itself that led us to such an approach. We had to be able to analyze the relational difference that these models made. Hence we needed a relational conception of power rather than one based on resource dependency, for instance (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1976) or labor process (Braverman, 1974) models. As Clegg et al. (2006) have pointed out, focusing on power/knowledge and its associated concepts is a central theme in the Foucauldian critique of managerial discourse as broadly defined (e.g. du Gay & Salaman, 1992; Miller & O'Leary, 1987; Townley, 1993), as well as in the critical TQM literature (Hasselbladh & Knights,

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2004; Kelemen, 2000; Knights & McCabe, 1999; Munro, 1995). Thus by focusing on the use of quality models in empirical practice we are contributing to an established 'nonmanagerialist' (McCabe, Knights, Kerfoot, Morgan & Willmott, 1998) research tradition.

The paper is divided into five sections. First, we present our 'interpretation' of the notion of power/knowledge1. In the second section, we introduce the SIQ model and delineate how we perceive it to be a practice of power/knowledge. The third section deals with the methods used to collect data. In the fourth section, we present the empirical case intertwined with an analysis of the objectifications, subjectifications and resistance that the SIQ model helps produce in 'the Authority'. In the final section, our conclusions are set forth and directions for further research are provided.

TQM and power/knowledge Foucauldian approaches to power should be distinguished from sovereign and agency orientated conceptualizations of power (e.g. Burrell, 1988; Clegg, 1989). A central notion in sovereign and agency-based approaches is that power-holders wield power over those who lack it, and that power consequently resides in the hands of certain people or institutions who can induce other people to do things they would not otherwise do (Lukes, 1974). In contrast, Foucauldian perspectives see power as relationally constituted rather than as something that an actor holds (see Clegg et al., 2006).

Foucault stipulated a close coupling between power and knowledge: power, he argued, is embedded in knowledge, and knowledge is embedded in power (Foucault, 1977; 1981).2 Just as medicine is embedded in particular regimes of knowledge which license specific disciplinary practices, so too is management. That management is able to perform certain

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sorts of practices, in specific ways, is underlain by a performative epistemology. In Foucault's terms, a performative epistemology emphasizes that peoples' perceptions of the world are framed by the discourses in which these perceptions are embedded (Edenius & Hasselbladh, 2002; Foucault, 1977; 1981; 1986).

It cannot be presumed, without empirical investigation, that a managerial discourse such as TQM will affect organizations and their members in the ways indicated in the rhetoric with which quality models are expressed. When informants use the language of TQM it might be assumed that they are being framed by its rhetoric, but people are not puppets; it might also be that they will use a specific discourse to reinterpret the meaning of the normatively framed rhetoric in order to resist the effects that its authors, promoters and others anticipate (see Kelemen, 2000). Use does not signify rhetorical capture. When the SIQ model is empirically studied and analyzed in a Foucauldian perspective, the focus will be on how, in what ways and to what extent the constitution of reality by those involved in working with the SIQ model is structured in relation to the rhetoric that the normative discourse of business excellence legitimates (Foucault, 2000a; 2000b).

According to Foucault, power/knowledge operates through its ability to objectify and subjectify (Foucault, 1977; 1981; 1985; 2000a; 2000b; 2000c). Through objectification certain human beings are made the target of power, a category of Being to be reformed (Covaleski, Dirsmith, Heian & Samuel, 1998). Subjectification individualizes categorical actors by constituting them as actors differentially discursively skilled in certain sorts of rhetoric, the capability for which resides in mastery of certain prescribed forms of knowledge. In the case in question that knowledge is the SIQ model.

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In general, any form of rationalized knowledge and expertise - of which we take quality models to be a managerial exemplar - may function normatively, promoting practices and technologies which will work as 'technologies of the self' (Foucault, 1977, 2000a). As such, they produce knowledgeable actors and practices that are literally constituted in and through the terms of the SIQ model. Examination is a key mechanism, i.e. making peoples' actions visible, detectable and objectively knowable. Examination reveals gaps between the empirical actuality and rhetorical possibility, between the person's present state and the idealization of the norm (Skålén & Fougère, 2007) which enables management's intervention either on or through the governed self, or through others in an inspectorial or tutelary role who steer action in relation to the norm. In the rhetorical context gaps may be represented in a precise deviation from a norm, such as 'zero defects' in the TQM discourse for instance. Failure to achieve the rhetorical norm gives further reason for investigating the practices that produced the failure; the categorical success of the program feeds on the failures of its subjective implementation, indicating yet more opportunities for reform. In so far as power/knowledge enables us to lead ourselves normatively, it is reflexive. People regulate themselves, with or without the support of others, by confessing and avowing their deviance from a given norm (Covaleski et al., 1998; Foucault, 1985; 2000c; Townley, 1993; 1994). Power/knowledge can thus be regarded as 'reflexive self-control, [creating] situation in which external sources of surveillance become [increasingly] unnecessary' (Clegg, Pitsis, Rura-Polley & Marosszeky, 2002:318). Ideally, the deviant self in a work situation will act upon itself, using its knowledge of what is appropriate and correct behavior for a competent and reflexive subject, in order to reform its own practices. In rhetorical terms, employees will act according to a workplace subjectivity stemming from knowledge that positively empowers their actions. This may spring from self-criticism and a personal striving for excellence or, where insufficiently internalized, external training and tutelary remediation.

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Some earlier research has suggested that TQM colonizes employees, thus achieving a totalizing or exhaustive impact (Boje & Winsor, 1993; McArdle, Rollinson, Procter, Hassard & Forrester, 1995; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992; Steingard & Fitzgibons, 1993). Boje and Winsor (1993: 57), for example, suggest that 'TQM establishes a carefully integrated program of social and psychological engineering ? which has a significant impact on the behavior and consciousness of both managers and workers'. A problematic aspect of a totalizing approach is that it leaves no room for employee resistance (Kelemen, 2000; Knights & McCabe, 1999; 2000; McCabe, 2002; Thompson & Ackroyd, 1995) or, indeed, for imperfection. Accordingly, other researchers into TQM have argued that TQM 'is rarely exhaustive of employee subjectivity' (Knights & McCabe, 2000:421). 'New opportunities for alternatively interpreting management directives are always arising on the office floor', enabling employees 'to secure alternative identities that facilitate resistance to the transformation of their subjectivity in line with the corporation's demands' (Knights & McCabe, 2000:431). Kelemen's study of TQM adopts something of a middle position, presenting a more diversified picture: 'In consuming TQM, employees may subvert its meanings in order to open up new alternatives for themselves or may simply accept the meanings propagated by top managers' (Kelemen, 2000: 493). An important task for research would be to analyze how (and if) TQM - and particularly quality models such as the SIQ model - shape managerial subjectivity and, if they do, how they can be resisted by people who draw on other resources for constituting their sense of self, their sense of subjectivity.

In the next section we will describe how the SIQ model, in its protocols, seeks to operate as a practice of power/knowledge. At the same time we will also note that, when deployed in organizations, power/knowledge regimes can always be resisted in ways that fall outside the

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range of their rhetoric. Resistance to a particular managerial discourse is often mobilized via other available countervailing discourses, such as a particular professional discourse (Covaleski et al., 1998; Stokes and Clegg, 2002). Such resistance is especially likely to arise when subjectivity is the site of contesting claims, such that two or more discourses contradict one another. Among works that are critical of TQM, Kelemen's empirical study gives examples of contradictions in practice (Kelemen, 2000). The author shows how employees turned to anti-TQM language in order to resist the demands of TQM itself. Knights and McCabe (1999; 2000) show how the introduction of any managerial discourse can open new spaces for resistance that re-interprets its central concepts to serve their own ends.

The power/knowledge of the SIQ model The SIQ model is promoted by the Swedish Institute for Quality (SIQ), an interest group whose aim is to contribute to 'quality development' in all parts of Swedish society. The SIQ model consists of a protocol containing more than a hundred questions in seven main areas3 and 27 sub-areas. The protocol is an articulation of the central tenets of the TQM discourse, for instance continuous improvement, process orientation and customer orientation (Cole, 1999).4 The questions in each sub-area follow a specific pattern primarily addressing 'approaches' but also including 'deployment', 'results' and 'improvement strategies'. By answering the questions an organization gets a description of the practises that are more or less systematically in use. The next step is to evaluate these descriptions with the help of internal or external reviewers. The concrete result of the evaluation is a feedback report that stresses both the 'strong points' and any areas in need of 'improvement'. The report is intended to serve as a plan for change and a jolt to action, with the ultimate aim of increasing efficiency. According to the assumptions of TQM discourse (e.g. Deming, 1986) the current situation should be described before moving on to organizational reform and transformation.

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Reviewers' reports invest managers with the sovereign power to tell people to do things that they are not presently doing. In practice, however, many organizations (including the case organization) go on for a long time before making an evaluation, but still they make changes in accordance with the rhetoric it authorizes.

Application of the SIQ model in accordance with the recommendations in the protocol is divided into four phases: preparation, description, evaluation, and improvement. The last three phases are supposed to be carried out repeatedly, as shown by the feedback loop in Figure 1. It is intended that people will change both their organization and themselves in accordance with the demands of the reviewer's evaluation report. The SIQ model is thus based on the external reviewer's interpretation of key episodes in its application, thus investing a degree of sovereign power in the review function.

Insert Figure 1 here.

The description phase as articulated in the protocol is much simplified: when viewed in terms of power/knowledge, the activity of describing can be reconstituted as including both objectifying and subjectifying. The SIQ model objectifies by providing what is posited to be an agreed upon objective and true description of how the organization works and how its members behave. According to Townley (1993), this representation of things is a prerequisite for management. However, some of the questions will not be answered, or will be answered inadequately in terms of the SIQ model, since the organization has not yet adopted the presumed excellence approach. Description thus reveals gaps between the actual organization and the norm imposed by the SIQ model. According to the normative ethos of the SIQ model, the presence of gaps means that the organization cannot work in an optimal way, because it

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lacks certain of the prerequisites for so doing. In the SIQ model, as in quality models in general, gaps work as a catalyst for moving into a new state, where new descriptions will subsequently be produced and where there is less of a gap between the normative ideal and actual practice (see Skålén & Fougère, 2007). Where the gap has not been bridged, nonconformance should be owned up to, or confessed, which, in turn, is meant to stimulate further changes (see Figure 2).

Insert Figure 2 here

Method The present longitudinal case study was part of a more comprehensive empirical study concerning the application of the SIQ model in all parts of the Authority, over a period of over two and a half years from December 1999 to June 2002. The following account is based primarily on data from the study focusing on the management level in one of the ten regions. To gather the necessary data we held 18 interviews with eight different managers; we observed meetings as participants; and we collected written documents from the region (e.g. various versions of the description, mission statements, annual reports, internal memos and inhouse magazines). In addition, the quality manager and the regional director - our most important informants - both used mini-recorders like diaries, noting and commenting upon the process of implementation on a day-to-day basis. In other words, we were employing a triangulation approach towards data-collection (Jick, 1979).

The SIQ model in the Authority

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By Swedish standards the Authority is a fairly large and geographically dispersed public organization. At the time of the empirical study it had more than 10,000 employees including professionals and administrators - in ten regions with headquarters in Stockholm. The Authority is a typical expression of the Swedish model for organizing public administration with fairly independent agencies working at arms-length distance from relatively small ministries. The Authority, whose roots date back to the sixteenth century, achieved its present form in 1971 and has played an important part in the development of the Swedish public sector in general and in the financing of the welfare state in particular. Accordingly, the Authority has thus taken part in developing the traditional values - such as political democracy, public ethics, and the security of life and property (Lundquist, 1998) that characterizes the Swedish public administration. The civil servants involved in the case study were the product of this ethos, combined with their particular professional backgrounds as lawyers or accountants. This ethos and these backgrounds affected their perception of the SIQ model, and thus also our analysis.

Between 1996 and 1999 some scattered but not very serious attempts were made to use the SIQ model in the organization. However, during the spring of 2000, a formal decision was made by the main management body of the Authority, to apply the SIQ model throughout the organization as the main means for strategic development in all its ten regions. In this section we offer a case study focusing on the management level of one of the regions that, in the summer of 2000 embarked on a process of working with initiated strategic development driven by the SIQ model. This process was conducted principally within the region's main management body, the management team (MT), and the writing group (WG). The MT included the senior managers attached to the region and was led by the Regional Director (RD). The WG was responsible, at least initially, for writing the description, guided by the

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protocol. The WG had five members including one MT member and the Quality Manager (QM). The members of the MT and the WG were all professional civil servants with a long history of employment with the Authority.

Phase one On several occasions during the autumn of 2000, the WG showed what it was doing to the MT, but the QM expressed her discontent: 'Work is going slowly. The reason for this is that some MT members haven't fully understood the SIQ model or what is entailed in working with it.' The group had too little knowledge or experience of the SIQ model. Previous strategic development activities within the Authority had focused less upon developing managerial techniques and more on developing professional practices, such as internal bureaucratic routines and vertical reporting to the ministry. Such activities were connected with the professional background of the MT members as civil servants, lawyers or accountants. Working with the SIQ model was more closely related to a kind of businessoriented managerialism which emphasised customer and process orientation that were new to them. When it came to prioritizing and making sense of the two discourses - the professional and the managerial - the former was given preference. One civil servant put this well when, referring to TQM, he said: 'The tools and the three letter combinations should never be more important than the real work'.

In a word picture that was not representative of the views of the WG and MT members, the new tools according to the QM made the '?shortcomings of our organisation very clear - our lack of structure - what we do, for whom we do it, how we do it and who is responsible. If we had not used the SIQ model, a lot of the shortcomings of our management and control system

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would not have come to light. The meetings we've had with the MT have been a useful wakeup call for it.'

A topic that surfaced several times during the autumn, creating considerable confusion, concerned the kind of knowledge and information that the SIQ model was intended to produce. The QM's standpoint was clear, consistent and in line with the recommendation made by the SIQ model: 'It is facts we want to stress'. According to the QM, this fundamental TQM approach was seldom employed in the WG. One person, who was a member of both WG and MT, claimed on the contrary that it was the desired future state rather than the present situation that should be described. He thought that the written reports of the WG were too 'down-to-earth' and 'shy' of any ambition for excellence.

Another subject of disagreement, which became evident at one presentation to the MT, centered on what was really meant by the key concepts of the SIQ model. 'It just felt like we had to stop before we started fighting. What are processes? Once again XX says one thing, I say another and the other members of the MT feel generally confused' (QM). Several essential aspects of TQM gave different managers the opportunity to voice conflicts and disagreements. Thus, while a new rhetoric was entering the organizational arena, its meaning was not fixed by its own rhetorical devices but was subject to diverging interpretations in practice.

After four months of intensive writing, the WG e-mailed its first complete draft of the description to the MT just before Christmas. Even though a lot of work remained to be done, the QM said: 'we've now introduced - or we've begun to talk in - completely different terms, in an entirely different language'. But many members of the MT felt insecure with this new

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'language', which did not make any sense to them. On February 6 (2001), the draft was discussed by the MT. During this session, the draft was criticized for describing the future intended organization rather than the actual one. One member of the MT said: 'I thought the intention was to write exactly as things stand today'. It is apparent, once again, that there is confusion about the way the work with the SIQ model is supposed to be done.

It is interesting to note what was actually written at this time as regards the recommendations of the SIQ model. The draft opens with an overview. The rest of the document, which answers approximately 50 questions in the seven areas given by the protocol, consisted of 25 pages of text. The questions that are answered in the draft are supposed to describe approaches. One telling example is the answer to question 1.1B3 - sub-section 1.1 (senior executive management), section 1 (leadership) - where the organization has to describe how visions and central values produced by senior executive management, affect the organization's development and formal structures, and the way responsibility is allocated within it. The answer given in the draft is as follows: 'The vision drives strategic planning since goals and structures are based on it. In addition, the regional management will discuss visions and values, and the influence that these exert on the organization's development, formal structure and division of responsibility.' The answer intimates that something is being done and who is responsible, a general feature of the draft. However, the description does not accord with the ideal stipulated by the SIQ model. The questions in the protocol call for more detailed and systematic descriptions of how things are done. It is thus clear that this first version of the description does not accord with the ideal prescribed by the SIQ model. In phase two this particular section in the first draft will be compared with the same section in a later version.

Analysis

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During the first phase of working with the SIQ, the members of WG and MT objectified themselves and their organization through the act of describing informed by the SIQ model (Covaleski et al., 1998; Foucualt, 1977). The members of both groups saw themselves as one of the main target groups of the SIQ model, in accordance with the inherent power/knowledge incorporated in the methodological protocols of the SIQ model (and the wider TQM discourse), which emphasize the general commitment of management (Hackman & Wageman, 1995; Juran, 1988). Several important sections of the protocol are devoted particularly to management issues. In our case, the WG struggled with the protocol to produce a description of the way the region, including the management level, was organized.

What the WG represented was a desirable rather than a literal picture of the organization, one that started to objectify the focal organization and their own role as managers by way of the SIQ model. Further, the act of describing led some of the MT-members to identify 'gaps' between the way the organization actually works and the norm that the SIQ model embodies by recognizing, that the region 'lacks structure', the division of 'responsibility' is unclear, and so on. According to the rational conceptualization of organization that informs TQM discourse (Zabaracki, 1998) and that is embraced most often by practitioners (Brunsson & Sahlin-Andersson, 2000), managers bear the overall responsibility for the functioning of the organization. Thus, the way that managers describe their work affects the way they are able to judge their own achievements. The process of writing the description places the writer's self under the lens of systematic reflection in terms of the SIQ model. It is by thus holding their managerial selves to account that they objectify themselves: they are managers who produce and can minimize - gaps.

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Although the practice of describing - which is central to the SIQ model approach - functions as an examination, it has not yet engaged many WG or MT members in confession, thus suggesting that power/knowledge has yet to affect their subjectivity. The QM, on the other hand, has started to use the SIQ model as a device for understanding the organization in terms of what it 'lacks': her way of thinking about the organization is already being routed via the TQM talk of the SIQ model. She believes that the very fact of working with the SIQ model has planted the seed for a new language that some people have already started to use. The very fact that people absorb the language of a managerial practice is crucial to the realization of its rationality. In previous critical management research on TQM (Keleman, 2000; 2003; Knights & McCabe, 1999), absorbing the language of a managerial practice has been taken to mean that practice does affect the way that people understand not only their organization but also their own professional selves.

The managers had not yet learned the logic of the SIQ model - something that earlier TQM research regarded as a prerequisite for revealing any immanent power/knowledge effects (Boje & Winsor, 1993; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992). The MT and WG members had not understood how they were supposed to answer the questions in the protocol. This may depend in part on an implicit clash between the professional discourse of the WG/MT members and the subject position imposed by the SIQ model. Due to the length of their employment at the 'Authority', and their professional identity as lawyers/accountants and civil servants, the managers were deeply and personally embedded in the professional discourse. For example, many of them (represented here by one quotation in the case description) believed that work on the SIQ model should never be allowed to interfere with their real work, whenever the demands of the TQM discourse clashed with the professional discourse. The professional

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discourse enabled the members to resist working on the SIQ model by not fully committing themselves to it and by giving it lower priority than their real 'professional' work.

The job of describing the organization according to the SIQ model was handled by the WG and not by the region's top management, who preferred to devote themselves to the 'real' work (remember that the work on the SIQ model had been imposed on the region by headquarters). There is a resemblance here to the type of resistance fuelled by the use of antiTQM language, which was noted by Kelemen (2000). However, resistance to the SIQ model was not only fired by the professional or other anti-discourses: the work on the SIQ model itself also provided opportunities for resistance, for instance in endless discussion about the meaning of concepts such as 'process' and 'customer'. As might be expected (see e.g. Covaleski et al.,1998 and Knights & McCabe, 1999) such terms were quite alien to the professional discourse of the bureaucrats.

Phase two At the same MT meeting that closed the previous empirical section above, the MT members reached an agreement whereby they were to be more active in describing the organization in terms of the SIQ model. This meant that the WG ceased to exist and the role of the QM became less important. From now on, she was simply one of the working members of the MT. Many of the new passages written between February 2001 and May 2002 were actually written by the RD. According to him, t is hard to find people with the overview that you have as a regional director and, thus, people who have the ability to write from the standpoint of a broad picture, which makes the description fragmented. The major advantage of this new way of working is that we obtain better material to work with in the MT.

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The discussion regarding technicalities that we had before is not that common anymore. Now we have a more common picture that addresses the strategic overall level. The work of the MT is more effective and people agree upon the picture being painted.

Through cross-validation between interviews with other members of the MT, we concluded that at this stage RD's perception of working with the SIQ model was representative of the MT as a whole. During this period RD and the MT assumed responsibility for implementing the SIQ Model and became more committed to the process. This was in part a result of the powerful position of RD vis-à-vis the other members of the MT. Given his enthusiasm at this stage, they were more or less obliged to start showing an interest in the work on the SIQ model, and began to understand the logic of it. As one MT member put it: An issue that initially concerned me a great deal was the SIQ model asking for approaches that we didn't have. Take process orientation as an example. We didn't have process orientation before. Or take sections 3.1 and 3.2 concerning different types of goals and strategies. Previously, we didn't have these issues so well thought out.

By describing the organization in terms of the SIQ model, areas that lacked any systematic approach (e.g. process orientation), or where these were poorly developed (e.g. goals and strategies), were made visible to the MT members. By acting upon these shortcomings, changes were made in compliance with the SIQ model. According to several public documents, the region is now at least formally process-oriented and its strategies and goals are clearer and more consistent. These changes have narrowed the gap between the formal organization and the ideal prescribed by the SIQ model.

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Further, many MT members pointed out that the SIQ model provides a more detailed and generally accepted description of the way the organization really works, and that this led to changes. According to one MT member: Using the SIQ model forces you to get to know the organization. Working with the SIQ model on the MT has made us start to think about how the organization really works, which will give us the opportunity to change the organization in the future.

Most MT members also agreed that the SIQ model paved the way for new ways of perceiving reality. As one of them put it: Previously, those of us on the MT have focused on details and down-to-earth issues of improvement. This is, of course, important. But the SIQ model makes us ask ourselves questions that are of importance to strategic development, which we haven't asked ourselves previously. The SIQ model ensures that we focus on the right issues in order to create a good business.

By May 2002, the MT had produced a far more detailed description than the one referred to in the first phase. It is clear that this later version is more in accordance with the instructions in the protocol, although there is still a significant gap between practice and the ideal provided by the SIQ model. In the overview, that introduces the description, four groups of customers are defined and the region's four main processes are presented. These are areas which were developed by the MT when it was working with the SIQ model. Since at the outset the region lacked any process orientation, the MT did learn something about the way the SIQ model can be used to produce such an orientation. The MT's approaches are more elaborate than had

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been the case previously; more has now been said about how and to what extent the approaches should be deployed, and, in several areas, connections have been made with other areas.

We will now make a further examination of Section 1.1B3, dealing with senior executive management's work on visions and values. The response to question 1.1B3 - 'describe how visions and values affect the development, structure, and allocation of responsibility in the organization' - in the later version is: Approach: The planning process is based upon the vision document. As an example, the goals and structures are based on the vision (see 'Section 3.1'). The vision document affects the business in that areas supporting the realization of the vision are given priority. For instance customer orientation and accessibility have been promoted in various ways: through establishing a telephone inquiry service and increasing the size of the switchboard staff, setting up the information section, giving priority to preventive activities and work on continuous improvements through the creation of the quality management post. Preventive measures have been taken by establishing strategic partnerships with other authorities. We are also using the survey answers from private individuals and companies to reinforce our customer orientation. Our planning builds on the participation of all the staff. All managers have career development contracts which emphasize their responsibility for planning, realization and follow-up, as well as the implementation of visions and values. Deployment: These procedures are used in the day-to-day work or in connection with the annual strategic development and planning process. The deployment of career development contracts is followed up during annual progress interviews.

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In comparison with the response in the initial draft this account is more exhaustive. It refers to other sections in the description (e.g. 'see section 3.1'). Such references are much more common in the later description, reflecting greater understanding of the connections between different areas of the protocol. It is also evident that the MT has gained a deeper understanding of how deployments should be addressed. Generally speaking, the description comes closer to the ideal imposed by the SIQ model, on two counts: first, the rationality inherent to the SIQ model has now been grasped, which allows for a different description; second, a good deal of strategic development work inspired by the SIQ model had been carried out in the period between the appearance of the two descriptions. Remember the comment of the MT member quoted above, namely that when the work with the SIQ model started in the region, many questions addressed approaches that the region had never used. Changing the organization to comply with the SIQ model makes it easier to describe and affirms one's subjectivity in its terms, as one who can not only recognize gaps that were not apparent previously but also to manage them.

At this stage the RD and the rest of the MT members were satisfied and proud of the work that they had done, although there were still discrepancies between the description and the ideal. This was hardly surprising: even organizations that have been using the SIQ model for several years - even winners of the Malcolm Baldrige Quality Award - are still registering gaps. In fact, no organization has ever come close to a maximum score in an external evaluation. The members of the MT were aware of this, and felt that their description was a 'good start'. The RD was especially satisfied with some parts, for example the section about processes.

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In view of the level of internal satisfaction with the description of the organization according to the SIQ model, the MT decided to get an external review. A reviewer provided by headquarters in Stockholm was chosen. Just before the results were to be presented at a special meeting of the MT. At a pre-meeting held immediately before the MT meeting the RD and the QM met the reviewer and learnt what his impression was, namely that the description had several weaknesses, particularly in the section on processes. The RD was very displeased. He forbade the reviewer to present his report to the MT. Soon after this, the QM left the organization, informing us that she was not surprised by the reviewer's report. It was her opinion that in their description the RD tended to describe intended approaches rather than the actual situation. Despite all this, work inspired by the SIQ model is still going on in the region to this day.

Analysis In the second phase, most MT members have committed themselves to the implementation of 'excellence', seeing themselves as targets of the power/knowledge incorporated in the SIQ model. In all its aspects the SIQ model is a management tool. By using it to describe the organization of the region, the managers are objectifying both themselves and their work. A concrete example of such objectification occurs in the way they describe how visions and values affect the development, structure and allocation of responsibility in the organization a typical managerial issue that is addressed by the SIQ model. The MT members describe their own approach to strategic management in the SIQ model's terms. Most MT members seem to think that the description thus produced is a true picture of the organization. The SIQ model, and its product, have thus become legitimized in the MT. Further, it is by comparing the description and the ideal imposed by the SIQ model that gaps between real life and the

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norm are revealed. The SIQ model thus functions as a means for examination (Townley, 1993). The objectification that we noted in the analysis of the first phase is thus corroborated.

In phase two the MT tried to narrow the gap between the real-life organization and the ideal. By describing the present situation in accordance with the power/knowledge embedded in the SIQ model, the MT members avowed their commitment to its discourse. According to Covaleski et al. (1998: 298) '?the one who speaks identifies with what is being said and thereby avows' (see also Townley, 1993; 1994), and in this way constitutes a specific subjectivity. If the avowal is influenced by what is believed to be a true picture of the organization (Foucault, 1985; Knights & Willmott, 1989), the process of subjectification is likely to be more intense. For example the SIQ model enables MT members to confess their earlier lack of certain approaches (for example process orientation) and so its deployment has made them understand that some approaches had not previously been fully worked out (for example strategies and goals). Some of the missing approaches, including process orientation, have been adopted and developed, while other - including strategies and goals - have been elaborated. The gap between the actual organization and the norm has been reduced. It is important to note that these changes were accomplished without influence from the external reviewer's report. As we described above, the report were not distributed to the MT.

The avowals in the MT are represented rhetorically in the language of the SIQ model, in comments such as 'we didn't have process orientation before'. The use of the TQM language by the MT members can be taken as evidence that these people have changed themselves in accordance with the normative TQM ethos. The SIQ model thus functions as a double-edged sword: it objectifies and subjectifies. Several members of the MT claim that working with the SIQ model has altered their perception of the organization and of themselves. We suggest, on

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a basis of the interviews that working with the SIQ model transformed the managers' ideas about organizational change from a professionally orientated focus on the details of the dayto-day work, to a more managerial and strategically oriented view. It thus seems that a professional identity is being complemented but not supplanted by an emerging managerial identity, that emerges in turn from describing the organization according to the SIQ model. This interpretation is supported by Munro (1995) who argues, on a basis of empirical research, that 'management style' will shift slightly - albeit not as extensively as Hill (1995) suggests - as an effect of implementing TQM.

It is still possible to interpret some of the MT members actions - particularly the RD's - as resistance. The QM suggested that describing an intended future state rather than the current one - with a view to putting the region in a good light - involved a reinterpretation of the rationality of the SIQ model and thus of the intentions of the Headquarter that launched it. Hill (1995) suggested that the managers in his study thought that TQM could be used as a means for advancing their own careers - an idea that our RD seemed to agree with. Our study shows that career advancement of this kind can easily occur, contradicting the rhetorical ambitions of TQM discourse regarding self-assessment and so on, which require an honest intention to describe things as they really are rather than a desired state (Deming, 1986).

Conclusion, contribution and further research We have suggested above that the SIQ model as a textual representation could be used for fostering sovereign power and power/knowledge. More particularly we have claimed that the external reviewers' reports invest managers with the sovereign power to order people to do things that they are not doing at present, while describing the organization in accordance with the power/knowledge inherent to the SIQ model would objectify the organization and modify

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prevailing professional identities. The description produced by the MT in the region was submitted only once to external evaluation, and it had no effect on the work with the SIQ model since the RD forbade the reviewer to revealing his conclusions to the MT. The MT's work with the SIQ model was thus never affected by the sovereign power of an external review. Although the power exercised by the external authority was limited, the SIQ model did make a power/knowledge impact on the organization as a whole (including the management level), through the production of descriptions that drew on its protocols. Our analysis shows that the MT members did look at the organization through the lens of the SIQ model. For instance, they understood that the SIQ model prescribed a process and a customer orientation for organizations like theirs. They consequently redefined their own organization to some extent, recognizing its shortcomings in these respects and altering their organizational structure in line with the TQM discourse. The SIQ model thus provided a norm that helped them to perceive legitimate gaps between reality and potentiality, between the present and the ideal states. We thus suggests that the MT members used the SIQ model to objectify their organization and themselves. Managers' ways of enacting their organizations are thus likely to change as an effect of describing the organization in accordance with the rhetoric of quality models.

Closing gaps between norms and existing conditions materializes power/knowledge (see Foucault, 1977; Townley, 1993). The MT members not only understood that a gap existed between the real-world organization and the norm - they also started to take action to close the gap. They confessed and avowed that a gap existed between the actual and the ideal when it came to process and customer orientation. Accordingly they changed the organization so that it accorded better with the normative ethos of the SIQ model. We would claim, however, that these changes not only affected the MT members' view of the structures and activities of

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their organization, but also their view of themselves as managers. One reason for this is that the SIQ model is a managerial technology dealing with issues for which management is responsible according to a rational view of organizations. These include deciding upon strategies, for such things as process and customer orientation. After describing present practice and comparing it with the normative model, they admit that they have previously been dealing with these issues inadequately; and it is this realization that makes them change their perception of the way managers should behave and thus what their own management subjectivity should be like. Quality models thus affect the way managers enact their roles as managers.

That TQM practices have contributed to shaping workplace subjectivity has been noted before in critical research on TQM (see Hill, 1995; Munro, 1995), but the extent to which this is so has been widely debated. Some have argued that TQM has a totalizing effect (Boje & Winsor, 1993; McArdle et al., 1995; Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992; Steingard & Fitzgibons, 1993) while others suggest that the effect is more modest (Kelemen, 2000; Knights & McCabe, 1999; 2000; McCabe, 2002). Since quality models are highly structured and prescribe with considerable exactitude how an organization should be designed, one might expect that they would have a totalizing effect on organizations. But, judging from our analysis, this does not seem to be the case. Rather, it seems as though the SIQ model has contributed to diversifying the subjectivity of the MT members. Our empirical investigation reveals no evidence that TQM has challenged the subjectivity of these actors as professional civil servants, but only that they have been affected by the normative ethos of the SIQ model. It would thus be possible to maintain that quality models elaborate and modify the subjectivity of the managers, but that their professionally-based subjectivity remains more or less unchanged (see Munro, 1995, for a similar conclusion). The examples of resistance that are noted from

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the use of the SIQ model by MT members, support this interpretation. Professional discourse is used to resist the SIQ model, for example by stimulating the reinterpretation of its managerial rationality, but it also seems that the use of such models opens up new areas for resistance, as has been claimed previously by Knights and McCabe (1999) and Kelemen (2000) with reference to TQM.

It thus seems that it is the organization's self-description, using the SIQ model, that launches the objectification-subjectification change loop illustrated in Figure 2 above. However, judging from our study, quality and excellence models do not have a totalizing effect on management subjectivity - far from it: such models are resisted, even by managers, when robust resources for identity-formation drawn from contradictory discourses such as those provided by professional identity are also available to them. Since much of the work done with these models has to be undertaken at various non-management levels in the organization, it would be interesting to look at the power/knowledge relations that such models spark off among other professional groups. We might learn more about the way they affect organizations and about how their impact is resisted. Meanwhile, we suggest that the rhetoric embedded in such models and the realities of their implementation do reveal something that ironically - the quality models themselves might term a quality gap - a gap that would be well worth further attention.

Notes
1

Many different, and even slightly competing interpretations of the notion of power/knowledge can be derived from Foucault's work. It cannot be claimed that there is one right way of applying Foucualt to organization theory. 2 There is theoretical justification for drawing on Foucault when analyzing quality models. The latter are not in themselves forms of sovereign power but rather forms of power/knowledge, since they are an extension of and legitimated by expert knowledge. Furthermore, in modern organizations, rationality and objectivity are guiding rhetorical principles. Forms of power that orders organizations, such as quality models, are thus normally legitimated by their status as 'true' knowledge.

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3

Leadership, Information and Analysis, Strategic Planning, Human Resources Development, Process Management, Results and Customer Satisfaction. 4 The questions are embedded in 13 core values, which the organizations, according to the protocol, will adapt by using the SIQ model in the way intended.

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Acknowledgements A previous version of this paper was presented at the Academy of Management annual meeting in Hawaii, Honolulu in 2005. We would like to acknowledge the useful suggestions that we received on that occasion. We are also indebted to the three anonymous SJM reviewers, to the editor Janne Tienari and to Hans Hasselbladh for their helpful advice.

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Vitae Johan Quist is a researcher in business administration at the Service Research Center, Karlstad University, Sweden. His major interest is in public sector organizations and their role in modern society. Among other studies he has, on commission from the Swedish government, studied the intersection between horizontal collaboration and performance management in several countries including Canada and New Zealand. Per Skålén is associate professor of business administration at the Service Research Center, Karlstad University, Sweden. His current research interests coalesce around power in organizations, institutional theory, critical management studies, intra-organizational aspects of marketing, workplace subjectivity and organizational socialization. He is the author of Marketing Discourse - A Critical Perspective (with Martin Fougére and Markus Fellesson) which is being published by Routledge later this year. Stewart Clegg has published a large number of books and papers and is based at the University of Technology, Sydney, and at Aston Business School.

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Figure 1: The work process of the SIQ model

Preparation

Description

Evaluation

Improvement
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Figure 2: The SIQ model as a disciplinary technology

Preparation

Description

Evaluation

Improvement

Objectification

Subjectification

Change

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.

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