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CASE STUDY 
 
EMBEDDED QUALITY AT ZARLINK SEMICONDUCTOR 
 
Mick is a project manager at Zarlink, a multinational manufacturer of semiconductors for a variety of high-
technology military, medical and consumer applications. Mick is also a part-time MBA student at his local university. 
As part of his MBA Mick has to complete a dissertation on a management topic of his choice. Since Mick had recently 
been selected to embed a new quality management system called TS 16949 into his manufacturing site at Swindon in 
the West of England it seemed sensible that he chose to study quality for his dissertation. Mick's particular fascination 
was his firm belief that the route to high-quality process in organisations was not through introducing specific tech-
niques but through ensuring that quality was embedded in everything done at Zarlink: part of the lifeblood of the or-
ganisation. “Quality is even about more than people's attitudes” said Mick; “it's about their beliefs. Quality must be a 
way of life and dominate the thoughts of everyone in the organisation, irrespective of their job.” Mick wanted to use his 
dissertation as a way not only of obtaining his MBA but also of learning how he could be more effective in introducing 
embedded quality at Swindon. 
Mick started off his research by searching the quality literature. There was no shortage of this. But soon Mick real-
ised that he was concerned with that branch of the quality literature that dealt with the 'soft' issues of organisational cul-
ture change. He became rather disenchanted with much of the literature because it was largely prescriptive. “I was du-
bious about a lot of what the gurus were saying,” said Mick. “They seemed to be saying that if you get your employees 
to believe this and do that then everything will be fine. I was sceptical of this because I knew through my MBA studies 
that the success of certain techniques is usually contingent upon the individual circumstances of the organisation.” 
Nonetheless Mick became attracted to the idea that embedding certain core values in the organisation was a good way 
of achieving quality goals. The problem was that he did not know which core values were appropriate for his site. 
Therefore his research question became: “What are the core values that need to be adopted in Zarlink, Swindon, if em-
bedded quality is to become a success?” 
More specifically, Mick's research objectives were: 
1) 
to identify general constructs that constitute “embedding quality” within an organisation; 
2) 
to compare these beliefs with those espoused by a sample from the senior Zarlink management team; 
3) 
to establish the behaviours and attitudes of the current workforce towards the quality management system at 
the Zarlink foundry, Swindon; 
4) 
4 to propose a framework of core values to facilitate the embedding of quality into Zarlink, Swindon. 
Having used the literature to refine his research question and objectives Mick then turned his attention to collect-
ing primary data within Zarlink. Initially he thought of using a positivist approach based on a questionnaire using quali-
tative data, but discussions with Philippa, his tutor, convinced him that there were other ways of collecting data. Mick 
began to think more deeply about his research strategy, and thought that the advantage of triangulating his data by using 
multi-method would convince not only his examiners that his data were valid but also the managers at Zarlink who he 
was hoping would give him the go-ahead to introduce his ideas. 
Mick’s first research objective had been met by his coverage of the literature. This had been useful in concentrat-
ing his mind on embedded quality, but it only took him a limited way. The second and third objectives would lead to a 
much more meaningful management dissertation. 
The second objective involved conducting interviews with key managers in order to “test” the ideas that Mick had de-
veloped about core values as a result of the literature review. The managerial sample he chose comprised managers from other 
Zarlink sites in the world who had an excellent reputation for embedding quality. At the same time Mick thought it important 
to include those managers who were concerned with implementing quality at Swindon. Mick conducted six interviews across 
three sites: one in Canada and one in southern England in addition to the third in Swindon. In each site he interviewed the 
foundry director and the quality manager. These were the key managers concerned with quality. The non-Swindon managers 
were interviewed by telephone, and the Swindon managers were interviewed face to face by Mick. He hoped this phase of 
data collection would give him a very clear idea of Zarlink’s view of quality. 
In order to meet the third objective he decided to collect data in two ways. The first was to conduct what he called a 
'gap analysis'. The purpose of this was to establish the current behaviours concerned with quality – that is, what people 
actually did in their working lives. This would tell Mick what was being done well and what was being done badly, or not 
at all, and therefore identify what needed to be done to embed quality. In order to do this Mick designed an audit form 
based on a purpose-made audit that had been used before in similar organisations. This was administered in all departments 
of Zarlink, Swindon. Ten of Mick’s colleagues were responsible for carrying out the audit. This involved Mick in training 
them in its use in order to achieve reliability. Mick was opportunistic in the second way he collected data in respect of the 
third objective. He was fortunate that a general employee attitude survey was imminent. He decided to insert a subsection 
in this survey that consisted of questions to establish employees’ attitudes to quality. This went to each of the 130 employ-
ees at Swindon. 
Mick was confident that his research strategy would yield rich, valid and reliable data on management beliefs and 
employee attitudes and practice, which would enable him to propose a framework of core values to facilitate the em-

bedding of quality into Zarlink, Swindon. This would enable him to make a valuable contribution to the well-being of 
Zarlink and pass his MBA! 

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