Introduction
This post explores how ethics and values relate to total quality management. It shows that ethical behavior both supports and reinforces a total quality environment. It considers some ways for managers and organizations to achieve (or not achieve) an ethical workplace, with focus on codes of conduct. Next, an approach to making ethical decisions is considered. Finally, the situation where there are no ethical actors in an organization is briefly examined.
Values and Total Quality Management
Values are qualities or things that we act to gain and/or keep. It is not something that’s just desired but something actively perused and maintained through one’s actions. The most important values in a business situation are honesty, confidence, initiative, and decisiveness, for it is through those values that a strong forward momentum is established and continued in any business or other organization.
Between individuals, the fundamental quality in relationships is trust, which is earned through repeated demonstrations of honesty. Trust can be built by being loyal to those not present, keeping promises, and apologizing when necessary (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 54).
In turn, trust is the most important quality for total quality management (TQM). This is because trust is needed for building responsibility and accountability (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 54). Trust among employees is also necessary for teamwork, communication, and smoothly operating interpersonal relationships. Trust is needed between managers and employees for purposes of conflict management, problem solving, and ensuring employee involvement and empowerment (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 52-53). All these features result in a business dedicated to total quality and thereby placing the focus on the customer.
When trust and ethical values are consistently demonstrated by managers and employees, the company as a whole can earn a reputation of being trustworthy. Bad decisions, broken promises, and unethical behavior will occasionally be demonstrated by employees or managers of a trusted company, but those lapses will be seen as rare exceptions.
Individual Manager’s Approaches to Ensuring an Ethical Workplace
Goetsch & Davis (2021, p. 55) lists three managerial approaches to evaluate and motivate employees to be ethical. The best-ratio approach, also called situational ethics, requires the manager to “create conditions that promote ethical behavior and try to maintain the best possible ratio of good choices to bad choices and ethical behavior to unethical behavior.”
The black-and-white approach requires managers to view ethics in a more absolute manner, where conditions are irrelevant to matters of right and wrong. Managers must then make fair and impartial decisions regardless of short-term outcome.
With the full-potential approach, managers act so that employees will achieve their full potential, and that deciding according to this standard allows employees to be involved and empowered. This approach as well as the best-ratio approach both assume that people are fundamentally good.
Organization’s Approaches to Ensuring an Ethical Workplace
Two actions that organizations can take to create an ethical workplace are ethics training and establishing codes of conduct. Ethics training is straightforward, but there are numerous problems with codes of conduct (COCs), especially as they are used in the information technology and software development industry.
In software companies and software projects, COCs are used as Trojan horses to smuggle in politics into companies and projects. The types of politics imported are far left “woke” politics and are enforced through diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) hiring and promotion practices.
COCs and DEI standards are used to violate the First Amendment rights of employees and managers and are also used to terminate employees or project contributors on political grounds. Conservatives and Christians are the most common targets (Wakabayashi, 2017). The workplace environment becomes one where there is a breakdown of trust between employees and managers, and this interferes with teamwork, combined problem solving, and interpersonal relations. The environment no longer becomes one of total quality.
All this agitation can and has endangered the stability of software projects and entire software organizations. A current example of this is the Mozilla Foundation. Their original purpose was to create and maintain the Firefox web browser as well as to develop and advocate various web technologies. Recently, they have moved away from these core missions and now focus on initiatives such as "digital justice," "queer youth inclusion," "engaging race, gender, and sexuality perspectives," "LGBT climate change," and "digital activism for young feminists." (Mozilla Foundation, 2023, p. 38-43)
These initiatives were funded by taxpayer money through USAID. Now that USAID has been abolished, Mozilla is facing serious financial problems, and it may have to dissolve itself.
Such are the results of codes of conduct.
Model of Ethical Decision Making
Goetsch & Davis (2021, p.57) list nine ethical theories, methods of determining the ethical course of action in various situations. I take a different approach.
The model I use for making difficult ethical decisions is as follows: I ask myself what would one of my personal heroes (either real-world or fictional) do in a comparable situation? The real-world heroes I admire include Ethan Allen, Francis Marion, Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck, Lt Gen Chesty Puller, General Patton, Steve Jobs, and Elon Musk. For fictional characters I consider heroic, I would list Lantenac and Gauvain from Victor Hugo’s novel Ninety-Three, and Howard Roark from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.
Conclusion
TQM assumes that the participants within an organization and its customers act ethically, as Goetsch & Davis (2021) make clear. They also provide sample ethical dilemmas (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 59-62) for the reader to consider. All these examples assume that unethical actions are taken by a few “bad apples” and that the majority of the organization acts ethically.
Something not discussed in Goetsch & Davis are situations where all actors are unethical. Two recent examples of such organizations are the USAID and the Afghan National Army. Large scale fraud was common in both organizations, and all actors were in on the grift. TQM may be able to improve the ethical standing of an organization if there are at least some managers who could enforce ethical standards, but TQM seems powerless when everyone is corrupt.
References
Goetsch, D. L. & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9th ed.). Pearson.
Lunduke, B. (2025, 25 February). How is Mozilla Spending that $1 Million from US Taxpayers? https://lunduke.substack.com/p/how-is-mozilla-spending-that-1-million
Mozilla Foundation. (2023). Public Disclosure of Form 990. https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-foundation-form-990-public-disclosure-ty23.pdf
Wakabayashi, D. (2017, 7 August). Google Fires Engineer Who Wrote Memo Questioning Women in Tech. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/07/business/google-women-engineer-fired-memo.html
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