Answer to Question 1
Total quality management includes two techniques (benchmarking and empowerment) which can be used to improve group decision making in general. The objective of these techniques is to encourage group members to make suggestions and use their knowledge to come up with ways to reduce costs and waste and to increase quality, with the ultimate goal of pleasing the final customer.
Benchmarking involves selecting a high-performing group or organization that is currently providing high-quality goods or services to its customers and using this group or organization as a model. When a low-performing group needs to make a decision, members compare where their group is with where the benchmark group or organization is on some criterion of quality. They then try to determine how to reach the standard set by the group or organization being benchmarked.
A guiding principle of TQM is that performance and quality improvements are the responsibility of all organizational members. Employees are often in the best position to come up with ways to improve performance and quality. Empowerment is the process of giving these employees the authority to make decisions and be responsible for their outcomes. Empowerment often requires managers and other employees to change the way they think about decision making. Rather than managers making the decisions and the rest of an organization's employees carrying them out, empowerment requires that the responsibility for decision making be shared throughout an organization.
Answer to Question 2
TRUE
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