Role of Organizational Culture in Quality Management

In this intensely competitive world, an organization can survive in business only as long as it is consistently able to deliver quality products and services. The impulse for higher quality has brought about far-reaching changes in the way business is conducted. Likewise, studies in recent years are attempting to establish the interrelationship between organizational culture and total quality management. An organization is likely to attain a set of core managerial standards, norms, and practices that distinctively identifies the way it runs business; such standards give rise to a culture that may confer the organization a persistent competitive advantage, particularly if it is nifty, atypical, and imperfectly replicable. The present study explores the case of Bhagini Nivedita Sahakari Bank Ltd., Pune, functioning in the state of Maharashtra in India. The bank serves as a classic example of business excellence through continuous quality improvement; it has a unique organizational culture realized by the adoption of a customer-centric business model.