Evolution, current and future developments in quality control circles : an empirical study trade unions' involvement in quality control circles in Singapore

• Main Authors: Chow, Yvonne Chi Hong, Saraswathy D/O Shanmugam, Tan, Puay Cheng
• Other Authors: Ho Mian Lian
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2015
• Subjects: DRNTU::Business::General
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/63529
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The challenge that Singapore faces in the 20th Century will be that of maintaining competitiveness in times of slow economic growth around the world. Since her industrialization, foreign investment and trade have been the important sources of the nation's continued growth and expansion. However, the recent news of relocation of major operations to other regions have sent an alarming signal to Singapore that it is losing its competitiveness. Thus, the firms are increasingly facing an urgent issue to remain competitive via productivity. One of the effective tools of productivity, QCC, then becomes the focus of companies in their competitive strategies. Therefore, one of the purposes of this project Is to trace the origins, developments and the future role of QCCs. Then the project will go on to explore the extent of the involvement of trade unions in QCCs by means of an empirical study in the local context. The research study reveals the fact that currently, trade unions do not play an active role in the QCC programme. Even though times are changing, unions are not perceived by management to be responding to the then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew's call to move beyond its traditional role. Due to the stereotype perception of trade unions' role, they were not invited by management to be involved in QCCs. The findings support Debrah's preposition that in most situations, trade unions are not involved in the initiation of employee involvement techniques such as QCCs (Debrah,l991).