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The Case of Active and InactiveQuality CirclesThomas Li-Ping Tang a , Peggy Smith Tollison b & Harold DeanWhiteside ca Department Of Management and Marketing , MiddleTennessee State University , USAb Textron Aerostructures , Nashvillec Department of Psychology Middle , Tennessee StateUniversity , USAPublished online: 01 Jul 2010.

To cite this article: Thomas Li-Ping Tang , Peggy Smith Tollison & Harold Dean Whiteside(1996) The Case of Active and Inactive Quality Circles, The Journal of Social Psychology,136:1, 57-67, DOI: 10.1080/00224545.1996.9923029

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The Journal ofSocial Psychology, 1996, /36( I), 57-67

The Case of Active and InactiveQuality Circles

THOMAS LI-PING TANGDepartment of Management and Marketing

Middle Tennessee State University

PEGGY SMITH TOLLISONTextron Aerostructures, Nashville

HAROLD DEAN WHITESIDEDepartment of Psychology

Middle Tennessee State University

ABSTRACT. Active and inactive quality circles (QCs; small groups of employees thatsolve organizational problems) were studied during the first 3 months (Times 1.2. and 3)and the last 3 months (Times 4. 5. and 6) of their existence. The results indicated that bothactive and inactive QCs tended to have more members during the first 3 months than dur­ing the last 3 months. Membership in inactive QCs decreased significantly from Time 5to Time 6. in contrast to membership in active QCs. which did not change during this peri­od. and active QCs tended to have more members than inactive QCs did at Time 6. Thus.a significant decrease in QC membership may forecast disbandment.

JAPANESE MANAGEMENT PRACTICES have been of interest to U.S.employers for several decades (Ouchi, 1981). Quality circles (QCs). in particu­lar, were considered in the 1980s to be one of the most promising approaches forimproving U.S. workers' productivity. A QC is a group of employees who usual­ly meet for an hour or so each week to discuss organizational problems, explorecauses, recommend solutions, and take corrective action, if they have the author­ity to do so (Adam, 1991; Barrick & Alexander. 1987; Ferris & Wagner. 1985;Griffin, 1988; Marks, Mirvis, Hackett, & Grady, 1986; Rafaeli, 1985; Steel &

We thank Melissa McCann and Janet Chamblee for their assistance.Address requests for the archival data for the 53 QCs and other correspondence to

Thomas Li-Ping Tang, Box 516, Department of Management and Marketing, College ofBusiness, Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, TN 37132. Telephone: (615)898·2005. FAX: (615) 898-5308. Electronic mail may be sent via the Internet toTTANG@MTSU.EDU

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S8 The Journal ofSocial Psychology

Lloyd, 1988; Tang & Butler, 1992; Tang, Tollison, & Whiteside, 1987, 1989,1991, 1993).

Over 90% of the Fortune 500 companies were estimated to have had QCprograms in the mid-1980s (Lawler & Mohrman, 1985), and over two hundredthousand U.S. workers have had QC experience (Lawler, 1986). Moreover,according to a survey of Fortune 1,000 companies, the number of QC programseven showed a small increase from 1987 to 1990 (Lawler, 1992; Lawler, Mohr­man, & Ledford, 1992). Despite this popularity, however, QC activity in Japan­ese chemical industries has declined significantly over a period of years (Cole &Tachiki, 1983), and QC programs in the United States have failed in more than60% (Castorina & Wood, 1988; Marks, 1986) to 75% (Crosby, 1987) of the orga­nizations that have implemented them.

Little research has been devoted to the problems that are involved in main­taining QCs over time (Goodman, 1983). Researchers have found that QCs havea lower rate of problem-solving failure, a higher rate of attendance at meetings,and a higher net savings of projects than inactive QCs do (Tang et al., 1993), butthe subject of QC membership has not been explored. Ferris and Wagner (1985,p. 158) emphasized the necessity for research on "the effects of group size on QCperformance." QCs have a definite life cycle (Lawler & Mohrman, 1985) whichis dependent upon membership (Lawler, 1992).

In the present study, our main purpose was to explore the differences regard­ing QC membership, for active and inactive QCs, during the first 3 months and thelast 3 months of their existence. We examined a 3-year period of archival data froma QC program, with the expectation that an analysis of QC membership over timemight provide information that would be of theoretical and practical importance.

Small Groups and Quality Circles

Group development follows five distinct phases: forming, storming, norm­ing, performing, and adjourning (Tuckman & Jensen, 1977). Our focus in thepresent study was group membership during two of these phases, the formingphase (potential members decide whether they want to belong to the group andwhether the group will meet their needs) and the adjourning phase (the group dis­bands).

Like larger organizations, QCs are born, grow older, and eventually die(Daft, 1992). Although researchers (Hambrick & D' Aveni, 1992) have noted sig­nificant differences between "bankrupt" and "survivor" firms, "the importantaspects of group composition have been somewhat underexplored" (Haleblian &Finkelstein, 1993, p. 845). Empirical research concerning the team size (mem­bership) of active and inactive QCs is practically nonexistent.

Reasons for forming QCs. The primary reason for becoming involved in a QC isits "potential for improving the work place" (Dean, 1985, p. 326). QCs are

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Tang, Tollison. & Whiteside 59

"sources of both informational and emotional social support" (Marks et al., 1986,p. 68). The decision to join a QC is significantly related to the desire to be moreinvolved in the organization and to the belief that QCs have an instrumental rolein solving problems (Dean).

Lawler and Mohrman (1985) and Sims and Dean (1985) considered the log­ical extension of QCs to be self-managing work teams. In self-managing teams,"all work group members are also team members" (Sims & Dean, 1985, p. 28).A recent managerial trend encourages more employee participation.

The amount of time one spends on the target activity during the free-choiceperiod (e.g., Deci, 1971; Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973; Tang, 1986, 1990;Tang & Baumeister, 1984; Tang, Liu, & Vermillion, 1987; Tang & Sarsfield­Baldwin, 1991) and one's willingness to participate in future experiments (cf.Amabile, Dejong, & Lepper, 1976; Staw, Calder, Hess, & Sandelands, 1980)have been taken as measures of intrinsic motivation. It stands to reason that peo­ple who are interested in QCs, whether for intrinsic or extrinsic reasons, are morelikely to become QC members than those who are not. QC membership is vol­untary in most U.S. organizations and can be considered an indicator of theintrinsic motivation within an organization (Tang, Tollison, & Whiteside, 1987).

Reasons QCs disband. The reason cited most frequently by people who do notjoin QCs is the perception that QCs do not accomplish much (Dean, 1985). Arelated factor is "the success or failure of previous programs" (Dean, p. 325), "Ifa QC never has a suggestion adopted, the members will become discouraged, andeven disband" (Wayne, Griffin, & Bateman, 1986, p. 84). A high rate of failureto solve problems may cause QC members to expect ineffective results (Dean) oran active QC to become inactive (Tang et al., 1993).

In one study (Wayne et al., 1986), a QC was considered to be relatively suc­cessful if at least two of the solutions generated by it were accepted and imple­mented by upper level management. The results of another study (Brockner &Hess, 1986) indicated that successful QCs were not significantly larger thanunsuccessful QCs. It must be noted, however, that the researchers in this studyexamined only nine QCs for a 12-month period.

"Low volunteer rate" is a factor that is destructive for QCs (Lawler &Mohrman, 1985). Team size may affect the "information-processing capabilitiesof top management teams" (Haleblian & Finkelstein, 1993, p. 845). QC mem­bership, effectiveness, and longevity may have a reciprocal influence on eachother; QCs may die because members drop out, or members may drop outbecause a QC is dying. In the present study, we explored changes related to mem­bership, using archival data from a QC program, although we were unable toexplore a potential causal relationship between QC membership and the likeli­hood of QC survival.

A QC's primary mission is to solve quality-related problems in a work area.QCs that "run out of problems" (Lawler & Mohrman, 1985) are no longer useful

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60 The Journal of Social Psychology

in their present form and may evolve into other forms, such as advisory groups,business teams, and semiautonomous work groups (Lawler & Mohrman). Someresearchers have suggested that QCs of this type should disband.

Changes ofcommitment and turnover. In a study on organizational commitmentand turnover, Porter, Crampon, and Smith (1976) examined leavers' and stayers'commitment, using the "last back" technique of analysis. Measures of leavers'commitment at 1.5 months, 3.5 months, and 5.5 months before their departurewere compared with measures of commitment for a matched stayer group, at thesame intervals. Porter et al. found that the commitment of leavers whose depar­ture would occur within 1.5 months was significantly weaker than that of thestayers, but that the commitment of leavers whose departure was at least 6months away was indistinguishable from that of the stayers.

Mowday, Porter, and Steers (1982) found that stayers' commitment was fair­ly consistent throughout their first 15 months on the job, whereas leavers' com­mitment was not only lower to start with but also declined as the leavers camecloser to quitting their jobs. 'The closer an eventual leaver comes to the point oftermination, the more his or her attitudes separate from the comparable stayer"(p. 40). It seems that if researchers are going to detect any significant changesbetween stayers' and leavers' commitment, they must assess employees' com­mitment approximately I month before their departure from the organization.

We believed that the pattern of membership in active and inactive QCs wouldbe similar to the pattern for commitment, just discussed. In the present study, welabeled QC membership for the first 3 months of operation as Times I, 2, and 3and QC membership for the last 3 months of operation as Times 4, 5, and 6. Forboth active and inactive QCs, the data for Time I reflect QC membership at thebeginning of the group's operation (the first month). For active QCs, the data forTime 6 represent QC membership at the end of the 3-year period, and for inactiveQCs, the data for Time 6 represent the number of members in the group before itbecame inactive (the last month). The data for Time 4 represent the number of QCmembers 3 months before the QC's disbandment, and the data for Time 5 repre­sent the number of QC members 2 months before the QC's disbandment. Theshortest tenure among all the QCs during the 3-year period was 6 months.

The main reason we limited our analyses to these six time periods was relat­ed to the fact that the shortest QC tenure in the present data set was only 6months. Because the sample size was small (53) and the distribution of active andinactive groups was unequal (36 vs. 17, respectively), the use of a longer timeperiod might have resulted in a further decrease in sample size, which wouldhave rendered our findings more tenuous.

We reasoned that active QCs would have more members at Time I than inac­tive QCs would because members in active QCs are probably more committedinitially than members of inactive QCs are. Although both groups may experi­ence a decline in membership, active QCs, at least the larger ones, will be able

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Tang. Tollison. & Whiteside 61

to withstand such a loss, but inactive QCs will not. For inactive QCs, this devel­opment may represent a final and irreversible decline. Although initially QCmembers may have been reluctant to share their reservations about the group'susefulness and may have been unwilling to leave, the departure of one or twoinfluential members leads to the almost immediate dissolution of the group.

Membership for active QCs should thus be stable at Times 4, 5, and 6, incontrast to membership for inactive QCs, which should be stable at Times 4 and5 and should experience a significant decline in membership at Time 6 beforedisbandment. We also expected that active QCs would have more members thaninactive QCs would at Time 6 and that membership for active and inactive QCswould not differ significantly from each other at Times 4 and 5. Our hypotheseswere as follows:

I. For inactive QCs, but not for active QCs, there will be a significantdecline in QC membership from Time 5 to Time 6.

2. There will be no significant difference between membership for activeQCs and membership for inactive QCs during Time 5, but active QCs willhave more members than inactive QCs will during Time 6.

Method

Participants

The participants were 316 employees-6.8% of the total work force of amiddle Tennessee structures fabrication and assembly plant-who had beeninvolved in 53 QCs over a 3-year period. The average age of the participants was36.8 years. The participants' level of education ranged from grade school throughgraduate school, with an average of 13.12 years of school. The participants' aver­age tenure with the company was 6 years. QC size ranged from 3 to 26 members,with an average of 8.5 members per group during the 3-year period.

In the present study we investigated archival data from these 53 QCs. Thesedata were obtained from QC facilitators' cumulative project status reports, whichwere updated monthly. Employees' subjective perceptions and attributions ofQCs' failure have been presented in other research (Butler & Tang, 1992; Tang& Butler, 1992).

Active Versus Inactive QCs

Seventeen of the 53 QCs died, and 36 survived during the 3-year period. Theformer were designated inactive QCs; and the latter, active QCs. The criteria forlabeling a group inactive were as follows. First, the QC facilitator asked all theQC members how willing they were to continue the operation. As long as at least1 member wanted to continue to solving QC-related problems, the QC was con-

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62 The Journal of Social Psychology

sidered active. This was the kind of QC the facilitator would try to revive. Sec­ond, the facilitator interviewed the area managers to assess the depth of theirinterest in and their support for the QC in question. If none of the QC memberswanted to have a QC and the managers were not interested in the group and didnot support it, the QC was pronounced inactive. None of the QCs that weredeclared inactive became active again during the 3-year period. The QC was dis­banded and declared inactive when there were no more members.

QC Membership

QC membership reflected the number of members in a QC across the life ofthe QC, during a 3-year period. Twenty-eight QCs were formed in the lst year ofthis 3-year period, and 4 of these became inactive before the end of the Ist year.Eighteen QCs were formed during the 2nd year, and 7 during the 3rd year. Only7 of the 53 QCs survived for the 36-month period. None of the 7 QCs that wereformed during the 3rd year had become inactive by the end of the year.

QC membership was recorded for the first 3 months of each QC's existence.The QCs did not begin their activities at the same time. Thus, the time period(month, year) for QC membership (Time I) was different for most QCs. Forexample, one QC was established in January of the Ist year; QC membershipdata for January (Time I), February (Time 2), and March (Time 3) of the firstyear were used in the analysis for this QC.

QC membership for the last 3 months of each QC was also recorded. Foractive QCs, data from October (Time 4), November (Time 5), and December(Time 6) of the 3rd year were collected. QCs were terminated and became inac­tive at different times. For example, one QC was established in January of the 1styear and became inactive in October of the 2nd year; QC membership data forAugust (Time 4), September (Time 5), and October (Time 6) of the 2nd yearwere used in the analysis. QC size varied from 4 to 26 members during Time Iand from 3 to 20 members during Time 6.

QC tenure, expressed in manufacturing days, was defined as the length oftime the QC had existed in the 3-year period. For inactive QCs, QC tenure wasthe total life span of the QC. Tenure for active and inactive QCs did not differsignificantly.

Results

We examined QC membership, using a mixed-design multivariate analysisof variance (MANOYA), with one between-subjects variable (active vs. inactive)and two within-subject variables (the first 3 months vs. the last 3 months; 1st vs.2nd vs. 3rd month). For active QCs, the means and standard deviations of groupmembership for the six time periods were as follows: Time I: M = 12.11, SD =4.49; Time 2: M =12.33; SD =4.33; Time 3: M =12.08, SD =4.36; Time 4: M

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Tang, Tollison, & Whiteside 63

=8.97, SD =3.46; Time 5: M =8.69, SD =4.27; and Time 6: M =8.69, SD =4.45. For inactive QCs, the means and standard deviations of group membershipfor the six time periods were as follows: Time I: M =9.53, SD =2.90; Time 2:M =9.35, SD =3.28; Time 3: M =9.06, SD =3.44; Time 4: M =7.00, SD =3.54;Time 5: M =6.82, SD =3.81; and Time 6: M =6.00, SD =3.59, respectively.

The results of the mixed-design MANOVA indicated that active QCs tendedto have more members than inactive QCs did (Ms =10.15 and 7.96, respective­ly), F(1, 51) =6.42, p =.014. QCs tended to have more members during the first3 months of their existence than during the last 3 months (Ms =11.26 and 8.09,respectively), F(1, 51) =36.79, p < .001. There were no significant differencesrelated to membership among the 3 months, F(2, 102)=2.33, p =.102. The inter­action effects were not significant.

We had predicted that for inactive QCs, but not for active QCs, membershipwould decline significantly from Time 5 to Time 6. We had also predicted thatthere would be no significant difference between membership for active andinactive QCs during Time 5, but that active QCs would have more members thaninactive QCs would during Time 6. The results of the simple main-effects testswe performed to test these hypotheses suggested that there was a significantchange in QC membership between Times 5 and 6 for inactive QCs, but not foractive QCs, F(I, 16) =9.99, p =.006; and F(I, 35) =.00, p =1.00, respectively.Furthermore, active QCs tended to have more members at Time 6 than inactiveQCs did, F(1, 51) =4.76, p =.034. The differences at Times 4 and 5 were notsignificant, however. Thus, the results of the present study supported bothhypotheses. Further, active QCs tended to have more members than inactive QCsdid at Times 1,2, and 3, F(I, 51) =4.67, P =.035; F(I, 51) =6.31, p =.015; andF(1, 51) =6.30, p =.015, respectively.

We also examined Pearson product-moment correlations, for active andinactive QCs. For active QCs, the QC tenure was negatively correlated with theaverage QC membership for the whole 3-year period (r =-.28, p < .05), where­as for inactive QCs, the same correlation was not significant (r =-.07, ns).

Discussion

The present results indicate that, during a 3-year period, the active QCs hadmore members than the inactive QCs did. In addition, for both active and inac­tive QCs, membership was larger during the first 3 months of the groups' exis­tence than during the last 3 months. There were no significant differencesbetween active and inactive QCs during Times 4 and 5. During Time 6, inactiveQCs experienced a significant drop in membership before total dissolution.

The fact that the larger QCs seemed to have a better chance of survival thanthe smaller QCs did may be attributable to a number of explanations. First,employees attend QC meetings and solve QC-related problems for differentintrinsic and extrinsic reasons. Members in active QCs have the option of satis-

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64 The Journal ofSocial Psychologv

fying their needs through the improved working conditions and greater opportu­nities for expression and self-development that result from QC activity (Marks etaI., 1986), but members of inactive QCs do not.

Second, members of active QCs may be more interested in and committedto problem-solving activities than members of inactive QCs are and, thus, forma larger group at Time I than inactive QC members do. We did not assess com­mitment and satisfaction in the present study.

A third possibility is that as group size increases, members' efforts tend todecrease (Steiner, 1972). A low level of membership, also, can lead to decreasedmotivation and ineffective problem solving. It seems likely that when groupmembership drops below a certain level, QC members may conclude that thereis no interest in solving QC-related problems or that the problems in questioncannot be solved by a QC. The few remaining QC members cannot solve theseproblems effectively and, finally, admit defeat. We were not able to determine,using the present archival data, whether the QCs died because their members leftor whether the members left because their QCs were dying.

There was a significant, negative correlation between tenure and size foractive QCs but not for inactive QCs. This correlation may be evidence that mem­bers who did not participate in or contribute to active QCs left the group.

Because the significant drop in membership occurred only 1 month beforethe QCs' failure, we had difficulty monitoring and predicting the results. Thiscontext was reminiscent of the employees' significant change of commitment inthe 1976 study of Porter et al.

The difference between active and inactive QC membership at Time 6 wasquite small (8.69 vs. 6.00), as was the change in membership for inactive QCsbetween Times 5 and 6 (6.82 and 6.00, respectively). The sudden decline in QCmembership may have represented the final and irreversible stage of the QC'sdemise. Perhaps many QC members, having decided that the QC was not use­ful, wanted to quit but were unwilling to be the first to leave. When other mem­bers left the QC, these members followed suit, and the QC dissolved almostimmediately.

This last finding has important implications for managers. Because it is toolate to save the QC by the time the decline in membership is noticed, practition­ers should be advised to look for other indications of waning commitment so thataction can be taken while saving the QC is still possible. A more detailed analy­sis of the events that occur during the final month is needed. Additional data thatwere not available in the present study, such as weekly data on group member­ship, member satisfaction, commitment, and QC involvement, should be used infuture analyses.

The results of the present study indicate that a significant drop in member­ship is a precursor of QC failure. Managers in personnel or human resourcesmust support QCs and increase their effectiveness and efficiency to prevent thesegroups from disbanding (Tang, Tollison, & Whiteside, 1987, 1989, 1993).

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Tang, Tollison. & Whiteside 65

The QC data that were examined in the present study, which were measur­able, quantifiable, and objective, can be retrieved from archival sources. Giventhe small sample size and the unequal division between active and inactive QCs,our analysis may be tenuous. Also, because QC membership, problem-solvingsuccess, and the survival of QCs are interrelated, these variables may have reci­procal effects on each other.

In any case, for managers interested in saving QCs, the seven factors identi­fied in a recent study (Tang & Butler, in press) of employee attributions for QCs'failure to solve problems-lack of support from top management, lack of com­mitment from QC members, lack of problem-solving skills, QC memberturnover, the nature of the task, lack of support from staff members, and lack ofdata and time-may be a good place to start.

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Received March 24, 1995

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