MEASURES FOR MITIGATING THE CRITICAL BARRIERS TO TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IMPLEMENTATION IN THE NIGERIAN CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

Purpose: This study assessed the measures for mitigating lack of top management commitment as a critical barrier to implementation of Total Quality Management (TQM) in Nigerian construction industry.

Design/methodology/approach: The study adopted a quantitative research approach. Simple random sampling was used. Primary data was collected using structured questionnaires that were self-administered. Descriptive statistics was used to analyse the data collected; analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA) was used to check the significant difference between the responses of different groups of the population.

Findings: The study revealed that all the measures assessed were very important in mitigating the barrier as indicated by their mean scores. However, the measures that ranked first, second and third were: Top management should have long term vision and mission towards quality improvement (having mean score of 4.71); Top management should have Strong leadership characteristics such as integrity, courage, humour and wisdom (with the mean score of 4.62); They should consider continuous improvement, teamwork and customer satisfaction as their prime objectives (with a mean score of 4.59), respectively. A p-value of 0.36 was also obtained which is greater than 0.05 benchmark thereby indicating that there is no significant difference as to how the different types of construction contractors perceive the level of importance of the measures.

Research limitations/Implications: Construction companies should give much considerations to the factors measured in order to get their top management committed. to gain the full benefits of TQM, once successfully implemented.

Practical implications: To list critical factors affecting implementation of TQM, as done by many researchers, has become monotonous and vague. The study took the most important factor and dissected the constituent points under it and ranked them from most important to the least. This is important for the construction companies because implementation of TQM can only be achieved in a step-by-step format/procedure.

Originality/value: This is one of the few studies that assessed the measures for mitigating the critical barriers of total quality management implementation in the Nigerian Construction Industry.