Cultural Change Management and Quality in the Tourism Industry

Abstract

Today, in a change competitive age, management confronts many challenges and so needs to pursue and attune to the developments in marketing, economic, technologic and customer issues. Here, change must be considered as the key factor to success in establishments seeking to retain in the market. Because that total quality management can be regarded as a vital tool to any organization; continuous improvement, one of the quality management principles, refers also to change and emphasizes a respectable importance. Needing a change to adapt organizations to total quality management is a complex matter and can only be achieved through long term approach. It requires an organizational transformation. In this regard it can be said that; cultural change has a relative importance to create a successful TQM strategy where an organizational culture is the fundamental factor considering the implementation of TQM. Although the guidelines for effective change management are important, it is the support of management that will lead the organization to a successful attainment of quality culture. In the tourism establishments, the change process has to be undertaken in an attentive manner as the relationship between the cultural change and customer-perceived service quality is more sensitive due to being a human sourced and human focused industry. Therefore, the purpose of the change through quality culture has to be adopted by all the personnel in the leadership of total quality management system. Not only the service personnel but also the customers should be involved in the enhancement of quality which will certainly lead the tourism establishments to success. In this paper, the cultural change management relating to the creation of corporate quality culture, in terms of the tourism industry, will be studied.