TQM in Facilities Design & Consruction Firms INTRODUCTION Introductory Statement

In the early1990s, regional economic integration continued to accelerate, the General Agreement on Tariff and Trade (GATT) continued to flounder, and Asia continued to set the pace in economic growth.1 A continuation of these trends could result in the development of a more economically compartmentalized world by 2000. Such an outcome, however, was not certain.

There are five levels of regional integration, the first of which is the formation of a freetrade area, and the second of which is the evolution of the freetrade area into a customs union. Beyond the customs union, the third level of integration is the common market. The common market, generally speaking, describes the pre1992 level of integration in the European Community (EC). The fourth level of integration is economic union. This is the level of integration which was initiated in the EC on 1 January 1992. The fifth level of integration is political union. Political union describes the integration of __________

1"The World's Biggest Boom," World Monitor, December 1991, 2630, 33.the states in

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ces management, with special emphases on organizational communications, and the management of change in organizations;43 3. all aspects of management science, including an expertise in the use and application of mathematical models;44 4. all aspects of decisionmaking methodologies, with an emphasis on decisions related to project control, selection, and evaluation;45 5. all aspects of technological planning and forecasting;46 6. the relationship between an organization's engineering function and the external environment;47 and 7. the relationship between an organization's engineering function and the organization's legal environment.48 The scope of contemporary engineering management, thus, is as deep as it is broad. No longer can the engineer be content to  42Cleland and Kocaoglu, 190. 43Ibid., 91178. 44Ibid., 179296. 45Ibid., 297376. 46Ibid., 377402. 47Ibid., 403430. 48Ibid., 431448.deal only with technical problems, while leaving other types of organizational problems to be solved by managers who may have little understanding of engineering. Similarly, the contemporary organization is an integrated entity which can no longer afford to entrust its decisionmaking to professional managers.
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Approximate Word count = 9268
Approximate Pages = 37 (250 words per page)