Transition from modern to postmodern in organizational theory: Total quality management

The modern era beginning with The Renaissance and Reform movements is the key belief of West culture which has the idea of overcoming every kind of problems thanks to intelligence and science. The idea accelerating with Enlightment Period exchanges traditional society rules for its own rules with the advent of Industrial revolution. The new rules formed with modern society project aim to implement its ideals in enlightened way with progressive principals such as reaching universal truths ,centralization. Believes and methods of the modern society formed in accordance with these principals, become highly questionable as a result of progress in technology and ecnonomical and cultural reflections of globalisation phenomenon. As a criticism of the modern, all these questions took part in literature by the name of postmodern. Basic principals of this new way of thinking disinguish itself as uncertanity, locality, partialism, pluralism The organizational model of modern society, which has these characteristics in the social and managerial sense, is Fordism, which is the reflection of rationality, universality and progressivism. In time, queries about modernization have normally been run about the management and organization theory of this way of thinking. Thus, the model of Fordist organization beginning with Taylor evolved into a more flexible model. The main reflections of postmodernism in organizational theory are anti-bureaucracy, fragmentation, elimination of differences, and pluralism. These principles remain Total Quality Management (TQM), where quality and customer satisfaction are featured. The purpose of this study is to determine quantity of reality this connotation reflects. The question of whether TQM reflects a postmodern approach or a modern management style constitutes the main problematic of this study. To find answers against this problem, the essential literature review is made. Key Words: Modernism, Postmodernism, Modern Organisation Theory, Postmodern Organisation Theory, Total Quality Management