High Tech High Touch. How Top Managers and Consultants Facilitate Organizational Transformation by Improving Social Competencies and Total Quality

marjatta Maula
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marjatta Maula: The University of Applied Sciences in Seinäjoki, Finland, Postal: Department of Management, Politics and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, Blaagaardsgade 23 B, DK-2200 Copenhagen N, Denmark

No 1/2001, Working Papers from Copenhagen Business School, Department of Management, Politics & Philosophy

Abstract: This report describes a transformation process that concerns competence development and

total quality in an industrial production company. It investigates the cooperation between

Grundfos, the world’s foremost global producer of water pumps, and Strandgaard Gruppen, a

Danish management-consulting firm. Together they developed ‘values-based’ management

and ‘social competences’, and implemented a Business Excellence solution at Grundfos

Management (the group function) and Grundfos A/S, the Danish unit of Grundfos. The

improvement of Total Quality started originally in 1993 by developing the idea of self-organizing

groups. In 1995 the project was specified further to include the implementation of

two supplementary aspects, ‘high tech’ and ‘high touch’. These concepts refer to EFQM (The

European Foundation for Quality Management), and ‘Learning Organization’ model,

respectively. The transformation process was motivated by Grundfos’ need to attract skilled

people into the industry. It was supported by the firm’s top management and other leaders

who themselves went through an education process and improved their competencies as

leaders. The major changes occurred, however, in the self-organizing groups. The

transformation influenced the individual employees’ and leaders’ self-consciousness, work-life

and partially also their private life. It empowered the groups and radically changed the

leaders’ role. Moreover, it inspired other firms, influenced the partners’ ways to do business

with Grundfos, and caused changes in the national agreements between the industrial

organizations and labor unions. As the recognition of this work, Grundfos A/S won 1999 the

Danish Quality Award. The company has applied for the European Quality Prize in 2002.

Keywords: Transformation; Change management; Competence management; Value-based management; Industrial production; Management consulting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001-01-01
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