The Long and Winding Road

TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT, VOL. 13, NO. 1, 2002, 101- 121

The long and winding road: The evolution of

quality management

Josephine Yong1 & Adrian Wilkinson2

1Cap Gemini Ernst and Young, Singapore & 2Loughborough University Business School, Ashby

Road, Loughborough, Leicester LE11 3TU, UK

Introduction

As expertise about how to do quality improvement diþ used among ® rms, wewitnessed ironically the death of the quality movement. By the mid- and late 1990s,quality disappeared as a major topic in the media and was less and less a focus oftop management’s attention. This is a natural process manifested in the growingnormalization of quality improvement as a management activity. In this process,simpli® ed versions of the more formal and often complex quality methodologiesgradually evolved. The absence of a formal seven-step problem-solving process orof quality function deployment, to name two quality methodologies, did not meanthat managers and workers had abandoned their new found interest in problemsolving or their customer focus in design. Rather, we must see this process ofaccommodation, adaptation, and institutionalization as the story of what happensto successful, or in this case partially successful, social movements (Cole, 1998,p. 70).

`Quality is No. 1’ , `Quality in products and services is a prerequisite for becoming a playerin domestic and international markets’ , `The Customer is King’ , and slogans of the like seemto have been the rallying cry of management in the last decade and a half. Whether wesubscribe to these messages as meaningful encouragement by management or just emptyexhortations, it appears that the management of quality is here to stay. In this paper, weanalyse the de® nition of `quality’ , a concept which is as multi-faceted as total qualitymanagement (TQM), but is the backbone of any quality management initiatives, and thengo on to examine how quality management has evolved over time.

Quality management: What is it?

In trying to explain the meaning of quality management, one must ® rst have an understandingof the word `quality’ . Although a much used declaration, there is little agreement on whatconstitutes `quality’ despite what the dictionaries might suggest, and it appears that the morewe hear it the more confusing its meaning seems to become (Price, 1990). Hence, instead of

Correspondence: A. Wilkinson, Loughborough University Business School, Ashby Road, Loughborough,Leicester LE11 3TU, UK. Tel: 01509 228273; Fax: 01509 223960; E-mail: [email protected]

ISSN 0954-4127 print/ISSN 1360-0613 online/02/010101-21 © 2002 Taylor & Francis LtdDOI: 10.1080/09544120120098591

102 J. YONG & A. WILKINSON

trying to impose a global interpretation on the word, diþ erent de® nitions of quality havebeen used depending on the circumstances (Garvin, 1988; Reeves & Bednar, 1994).

Multiple dimensions of quality

Quality is excellence

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1990), quality is de® nedas èxcellence’ or `goodness’ . The origins of this de® nition come from the Greek word àrete’ ,which is taken for superiority or being the best. Garvin (1988), in his transcendent approachsaw quality as being:

both absolute and universally recognizable, a mark of uncompromising standardsand high achievement . . . often quality cannot be de® ned precisely, that it is simple,unanalyzable property we learn to recognize only through experience (Garvin, 1988,p. 41).

In his book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Pirsig (1974) de® nes quality as ìnnateexcellence’ . His view implies that high quality is timeless and enduring, an essence that risesabove individual tastes or styles. Others, like Tuchman (1980), see quality to mean:

investment of the best skill and eþ ort possible to produce the ® nest and mostadmirable results possible . . . Quality is achieving or reaching for the higheststandard as against being satis® ed with the sloppy or fraudulent . . . It does notcompromise with second-rate (Tuchman, 1980, p. 39).

The `quality as excellence’ de® nition re¯ ects a commonsensical notion of quality and it isnot uncommon to talk about `Rolls Royce quality’ or `top quality’ . This abstract descriptionmay form the foundation for many advertising campaigns to lure customers, but such a viewof the quality concept oþ ers little practical purpose for the person on the production line(Shewhart, 1931). The `you will know it when you see it’ outlook on quality does not informmanagers of how to pursue excellence. Also, to argue that the hallmarks of quality areìntensive eþ ort’ and `honesty of purpose’ tells us little about how quality products diþ erfrom those that are run-of-the-mill (Tuchman, 1980). Therefore, interpretations of the wordneed to be more pragmatic, more objective and more tangible so as to inform managers ofhow to make improvements.

Another downside of de® ning quality as excellence is that it may not be customer-drivenbut supplier-driven, and this can be `commercial suicide’ if the supplier does not continuouslymonitor the customers’ de® nition of èxcellence’ and meet these market needs. Too often,customers may also associate an excellent product or service with being one that is expensiveand beyond one’s means, and this unfortunate association may lead many potential customersto opt for a more aþ ordable alternative or one that has greater value for money.

Quality is value

Value-based de® nitions of quality describe quality in terms of costs and prices. According tothis de® nition, a quality product is one that provides performance or requirements’ conform-ance at an acceptable price or cost. This notion of value has been included in some de® nitionsof quality; for example, Feigenbaum (1983) gave the following:

Quality does not have the popular meaning of `best’ in any absolute sense. It means`best for certain customer conditions’ . These conditions are (a) the actual use and

THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD 103

(b) the selling price of the product. Product quality cannot be thought of apart fromproduct cost (Feigenbaum, 1983, p. 1).

Hence, a £700 neck tie, however well made, cannot be a quality product, for it would ® ndfew buyers willing to purchase it. Thus, for ® rms to oþ er value in their products, they must`concentrate on both internal eý ciency and external eþ ectiveness . . . (they) are forced toconsider both the cost implications of internal conformance to speci® cations and the extentto which external customer expectations are met’ (Reeves & Bednar, 1994, p. 429).

De® ning quality as value also allows comparison to be made across widely diþ erentobjects and experiences, such as a Eurostar train journey through the Channel Tunnel toParis versus a plane ¯ ight from London to Paris. The value de® nition of quality facilitatescross-industry analyses about consumers’ decisions among multiple substitutes. Therefore, avalue-based de® nition may give a more accurate indication of how products or services areperceived by consumers and how purchase decisions are reached (Reeves & Bednar, 1994,p. 429).

Despite its advantages, the shortfall of seeing `quality-as-value’ is that it is diý cult toapply in practice. Value has the disadvantage of blending two related but distinct concepts:excellence and worth. The result is a hybridÐ ’aþ ordable excellence’ Ð that lacks well-de® nedlimits and is often subjective (Garvin, 1988, p. 46).

Quality is conformance to speci® cations

During the two World Wars, there were great demands for mass-produced, reliable arma-ments, and the main determinant of quality by the armed forces was to assess whether thearmaments conformed to their speci® cations. Industry during that period was very particularabout receiving parts that conformed to speci® cations because failing to meet `specs’ meantthat parts would not be interchangeable and the whole production process would fail.

The `conformance to speci® cations’ view of quality is a manufacturing-based outlook. Itimplies that once a design or a speci® cation has been established by the producer, anydeviation from it, during production or downstream from production, means a reduction inquality. Shewhart (1931), one of the ® rst US statisticians to focus his attention on quality,used statistical analysis to measure whether speci® cationsÐ and therefore qualityÐ had beenachieved.1

Historically, quality as `conformance-to-speci® cations’ tended to be internally focused.By using this view of quality, organizations pay

little attention to the link, in customers’ minds, between quality and productcharacteristics other than conformance. Rather, quality is de® ned in a manner thatsimpli® es engineering and production control. On the design side, that has led toan emphasis on reliability engineering. On the manufacturing side, it has meant anemphasis on statistical quality control (Garvin, 1988, p. 45).

Such a outlook on quality is focused on only one objective: cost reduction for the organization.The emphasis of this de® nition is, however, misleading, because it focuses on the producer’sspeci® cation of quality and yet if what the producer delivers is not what the user or customerwants (not unlike the `quality as excellence’ de® nition), it is irrelevant even if it is producedin a quality manner. Hence, many proponents (such as Crosby, Deming, Feigenbaum andJuran) of a conformance-to-speci® cations de® nition go further, to stress that customers’needs and wants must be the driving force of the speci® cations that producers establish. Forexample, Juran (1951) de® ned quality as being:


made up of two components: quality of design and quality of conformance. Qualityof design is a measure of how well the product or service is designed to achieve theagreed requirements (of the customer) while the quality of conformance to designconcerns the extent to which the product or service conforms to the designspeci® cations ( Juran, 1951, p. 12).

While conforming to speci® cations may be useful in settings where standards and speci® crequirements can be easily set, leading to consistency in operations, it is not so easilyapplicable outside the industrial sector, where customers’ needs cannot be easily translatedto speci® cations, or in sectors where the markets (and customers’ needs) are continuouslychanging. In such environments, the customers’ ® nal evaluation of quality go beyond theexpected speci® cations, characteristics or features of their purchase, to the extras that canturn customer satisfaction to customer delight. For example, the helpfulness and competenceof the salesperson, the packaging, the ambience of the store, the after-sales service and soonÐ all these usually go beyond the `conformance-to-speci® cations’ de® nition of quality andlead us to the next dimension of quality, that is, meeting and/or exceeding customers’expectations.

Quality is meeting and/or exceeding customers’ expectations

The extent to which a product or service is meeting and/or exceeding the expectations ofcustomers is currently the most widely used de® nition of quality. Most of the original`gurus’ (such as Crosby, Feigenbaum, Juran and Deming) describe quality as meeting therequirements of the customer. In Feigenbaum’s 1983 edition of his book Total Quality Control,quality was stated as:

the total composite product and service characteristics of marketing, engineering,manufacture, and maintenance through which the product and service in use willmeet the expectations of the customer (Feigenbaum, 1983, p. 7).

As early as 1974, Juran also introduced the ® tness for use’ de® nition for quality in his Quality

Control Handbook. By this description, quality was seen as the extent to which a productsuccessfully serves the purposes of the user, not the manufacturer, merchant or the repairshop. Similarly, Deming (1986) described quality in terms of developing uniform anddependable work practices that are congruent with delivering products or services at low costwith a quality suited to the market.

The addition of `customer’ , ùser’ or `market’ to previous de® nitions of quality extendsits meaning to a wider dimension. In particular, it ensures that ® rms are more externallyfocused and they pay greater attention to the changes in the market using various customermonitoring systems. Buzzell and Gale (1987, p.111) describe quality as `whatever thecustomers say it is, and the quality of a particular product or service is whatever the customerperceives it to be’ . Customers’ quality expectations are, however, dynamic and companiestherefore need to recognize this evolution in the customer’s de® nition of quality. For example,a product, like the Pentium III PC, considered advanced at the time of purchase, may beobsolete a few years later.

This customer-focused de® nition of quality is said to have grown out of the servicemarketing literature (Gonroos, 1983; Parasuraman et al., 1985). The popularity of thisde® nition has been because the `conformance-to-speci® cations’ de® nition failed to addressthe unique characteristics of the services industry (Reeves & Bednar, 1994). All these add tothe pressure on organizations to pay attention to service attributes (which are often also


subjective) such as courtesy, helpfulness, con® dence and appearance, that are critical tocustomers’ assessment of quality. In Garvin’s thesis, quality was seen as being made of eightcritical dimensions; besides performance, reliability, conformance and durability, otherattributes included features, aesthetics, serviceability and perceived quality. Others, likeSchonberger (1990), went further than Garvin in including attributes such as quick response,quick-change expertise, humanity and value.

The `meeting and/or exceeding-customers’ expectations’ de® nition is the most diý cultde® nition of quality to measure. It is also very subjective. Diþ erent customers place diþ erentweights on various attributes of a product and/or service and this makes aggregating individualpreferences to give meaningful de® nitions of quality at the market level diý cult (Garvin,1988). Nevertheless, with its focus on customers’ expectations, it is still the most widelyaccepted de® nition and has been said to form the backbone of TQM programmes (Tuckman,1995).

The various de® nitions discussed show that there is no òne best’ or `correct’ de® nitionfor quality. As the Japanese quality expert, Kaoru Ishikawa, re¯ ected, the meaning of qualityis rather wide-ranging:

Narrowly interpreted, quality means quality of product. Broadly interpreted, qualitymeans quality of work, quality of service, quality of information, quality of process,quality of division, quality of people, including workers, engineers, managers, andexecutives, quality of systems, quality of company, quality of objectives, etc. (Ishikawa,1985, p. 45).

In the context of present-day quality management, however, the customer-focused de® nitionis probably better suited and easier to implement than the transcendent approach to quality.

Evolution of quality management

As a concept, quality management has a long history. In its original form, quality was reactiveand inspection-oriented but today, quality-related activities in organizations have come to beseen as being more strategic in outlook (American Quality Foundation (AQF) and Ernst &Young, 1991; Feigenbaum, 1983; Powell, 1995). Once the province of the manufacturingdepartments, the management of quality is now being embraced by functions as diverse aspurchasing, human resources and marketing, and is said to command the attention of topmanagement and chief executives (Garvin, 1988).

To understand its origins, it is useful to follow the evolution of quality managementfrom its traditional inspection role, through quality control, quality assurance, to TQM.These phases in the history of the quality movement have been referred to as the `quality eras’(Garvin, 1988). According to Tuckman (1995), TQMÐ the phase of quality management weare witnessing todayÐ has emerged as a critique of previous forms of quality management.

Inspection

Activities such as measuring, examining, testing, gauging one or more characteristicsof a product or service and comparing these with speci® ed requirements to determineconformity (BS 4778, 1987; ISO 8402, 1986).

. . . is an after-the-event screening process with no prevention content other than,perhaps, identi® cation of suppliers, operations, or workers, who are producing non-conforming products or services (Dale et al., 1994, p. 5).


Even as far back as the Middle Ages, quality played a key role in industry. The maintenanceof quality then was controlled by detailed production speci® cations,2 quality inspections andaudits to assure that speci® cations were followed, and the long periods and high standards oftraining required of apprentices by the medieval guilds (Bester® eld, 1979; Juran, 1995b). Upuntil the Industrial Revolution, production continued to be very highly skilled craft activitieswith quality being ensured by the skills of journeymen and apprentices working for mastercraftsmen (Chandler, 1977), and with their guilds ensuring that no defective goods werepassed on to the consumers3 (Hitchens, 1995; Khan & Hashim, 1983). This traditionalapproach worked well under the conditions of the time and high quality was produced.Feigenbaum (1983) termed this period as having òperator quality control’ as craftsmen hadcomplete control over the whole manufacturing process and pride in their work was re¯ ectedin the quality of the ® nished products.

Although the concepts of inspection and inspectors were found in the craft guilds ofEurope during the Middle Ages, their origins are said to be even more ancient. Examples ofinspection were found in the wall paintings and reliefs in Egyptian tombs: measuringinstruments like the square, level and plumb bob were used for alignment control, whilesurface ¯ atness of stones was checked using boning rods and by threads stretched across thefaces of stone blocks (Singer et al., 1954). Not unlike the Egyptians, the Chinese were alsousing measuring tools such as the compass, square, carpenter’s square and yardstick toexamine the `size, angle, soundness, and straightness of the parts and spares of manufacturingvehicles’ as early as the Xia Dynasty in the 21st to 17th Century BC ( Jin et al., 1995, p. 8).

In more recent times in the USA, the ® rst examples of formal inspection were found inthe Spring® eld Armoury around the 1830s. Inspection allowed the armoury’s administratorsto have control over production and accountability for work:

Each worker placed his `private mark’ on each piece he made. After the assistantmaster armourer had inspected and passed the piece, he put his mark on it next tothat of the worker. The supervisor also submitted a monthly oý ce report whichlisted pieces passed and rejected (Chandler, 1977, pp. 73-74).

The resulting traceability from these markings was a powerful aid for ensuring quality, as ifthe quality was poor the worker responsible could be penalized or retrained depending onthe cause.

The Industrial Revolution, however, changed the way products were manufactured.Prior to the 1900s, goods were mainly produced in small quantities; parts were matched toone another by hand, and after-the-fact inspections to ensure quality were usually conductedinformally, if at all. Although post-production inspections by supervisors were practised, self-inspections by the craftsmen were the most common practice then. However, with theonset of the Industrial Revolution, mass production became a predominant form of workorganization. Factories were faced with employing more workers to cope with the demand,and specialization of labour was hastened by ¯ ow-line working, as championed by the schoolof scienti® c management (Taylor, 1919). The worker no longer made the entire product,only a part of it, and this led to a decline in product workmanship and a drift away fromoperator ownership of the whole task and of quality. Instead, responsibility for quality wasassumed by the foremen in charge of specialized groups of workers.

World War I also stimulated mass production of complicated products, like armaments,and created greater demands for accuracy of manufacture, precision of measurement andinterchangeability of parts. This meant that quality became a pressing issue, with the forcesrequiring reliable products to arrive on time. Industrial inspection became indispensable, andinspectors from various departments were grouped together to form the new full-time


inspection department, with the responsibility of keeping defective products from reachingthe customers. This was achieved in various ways: raw materials and goods in process weresampled, with the results of the sampling determining the disposition of the lot. Finishedproducts, on the other hand, were usually inspected in detail in order to separate the goodfrom the defective ( Juran, 1995b). All this and the acquisition of highly specialized measuringinstruments by organizations gave industrial inspection a greater recognition in the productionprocess.

Quality control

. . . is the operational techniques and activities that are used to ful® l requirementsfor quality (BS 4778, 1987; ISO 8402, 1986).

. . . there will have been some development from the basic inspection activity interms of sophistication of methods and systems and the quality management toolsand techniques which are employed (Dale et al., 1994, p. 6).

In 1924, W. A. Shewhart, a Bell Laboratories physicist at the Western Electric Company’sHawthorne Plant in Chicago, developed a statistical chart for the control of product variables.Shewhart’s work marked the beginning of statistical quality control (SQC) and was publishedin 1931 in his book, Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product. His thesis wasrecognized as giving the quality discipline a scienti® c footing for the ® rst time.

Shewhart recognized that variability was a key concern in any production process. Tohelp in distinguishing acceptable variation from ¯ uctuations that indicated problems, heintroduced the concept of statistical control. Simple statistical techniques for determiningvariation limits of the production process and graphic methods for plotting values to assesswhether they fell within an acceptable range were developed. These graphic results are nowknown as `process control charts’ .

At the time that Shewhart was pursuing his work on process control, two other scientistsfrom the Bell Laboratories were advancing the practice of sampling, another importantelement in the growth of statistical quality control (SQC). Dodge and Romig developed thearea of acceptance sampling as a substitute for 100% inspection. Their sampling techniquesstarted from the premise that 100% inspection was a time-consuming and ineý cient way ofsorting the good items from the bad. Checking a limited number of items in a productionlot, then deciding on that basis whether the entire lot is acceptable, was Dodge and Romig’salternative.

Important as these techniques remain today, recognition of the value of SQC and theextensive range of mathematical and statistical tools was not widespread until the start ofWorld War II, when the need to produce ammunitions in large volumes became pressing.World War II saw the development of a new set of sampling tables based on the concept ofacceptable quality levels (AQLs). The AQL is the poorest level of quality or maximumpercentage defective that a supplier can maintain over time and still could be considered assatisfactory. This concept met with great success as inspections became less time-consumingbecause they were conducted only when defect rates constantly exceeded AQL.

As quality control activities intensi® ed in usage, there was also a growing demand for anew job category for the quality specialists, namely the quality control engineer. Largecompanies also tended to form a new department called the Quality Control Department,which presided over inspection and quality control engineering functions. Despite theincreased stature of the quality specialists in the organization, the impact of statistical


techniques was limited to the shop-¯ oor employees, and quality did not actively involvemanagement until the introduction of quality assurance.

Quality assurance

All those planned and systematic actions necessary to provide adequate con® dencethat a product or service will satisfy given requirements for quality (BS 4778, 1987;ISO 8402, 1986).

More emphasis is placed on advanced quality planning, improving the design of theproduct, process and services, improving control over the process and involving andmotivating people (Dale et al., 1994, p. 8).

It was only from the 1950s and 1960s that quality began to evolve from a narrow,manufacturing-based discipline to one with broader implications for management. Whilequality management’s earlier history was centred on detection and ® re-® ghting’ activities,the `quality assurance’ (QA) era shifted industry’s focus to preventing defects. The QAprofessional’ s tools also expanded beyond the statistical methods of the quality control (QC)era, as the main aim of QA was seen as serving the people who were not directly responsiblefor the operations, but those who `need to knowÐ to be informed as to the state of aþ airsand hopefully, to be assured that all is well’ ( Juran, 1995b, p. 627).

Early forms of QA appeared in the craft guilds in the form of ® nal product inspectionsand audits to assure compliance of products and process speci® cations. Formal standardshad also begun to be used by the turn of the 1900s, and Britain was said to have started the® rst standardizing body4 in the world in 1901 (Morrison, 1990). Although standardizationbodies have been around since the early 20th Century, the use of standards in industry wasnot fully exploited until the 1960s, when military standards (drawn based on a series ofNATO standards) began to be formalized and the British government and its Ministry ofDefence (MOD) required its military suppliers to adopt a system of preventive measures intheir establishments. This resolve to promote prevention modes of QC, rather than detectionpractices, was further re¯ ected in the government-appointed Raby Committee, which wasset up in 1968 to set the direction and development of QA in both the public and privatesectors in the UK:

The Committee considered that the fundamental problem was how to ensure thequality of a product. They de® ned a good quality product as one which meets therequirements of the service adequately, is available at the right time and will beeconomical and reliable through its working life. The Committee did not considerthat ` inspection’’ by an outside body can itself ensure the quality required. Theysaid that what was needed is a comprehensive approach to quality assurance inwhich the customer, the designer, and the producer all play their part. TheCommittee emphasised that the customer must de® ne his requirements in terms ofperformance, environment, reliability, maintainability, and similar criteria with themaximum precision. The supplier must use such systems and procedures both inoverall management and design and production methods, as well as quality assur-ance, as give con® dence that the end product will meet, in all respects, the de® nedrequirement of the customer (Drew, 1972, p. 16).

Although the philosophy behind QA was initiated for the defence industries, its in¯ uencegradually broadened to the private sector, and by the 1970s customers of large industrialcompanies were demanding of their suppliers proper QC systems, thus assuring them of the


quality of their purchases. These systems were to be instituted and followed closely bysuppliers as a condition for becoming and remaining suppliers. Audits by customers becamea way of life for many of these companies, and in many cases a burdensome one as eachcustomer had their own expectations of what constitutes a proper QC system. Multiple auditsor assessments were the results as there was then no consensus among customers of commonstandards required of their suppliers. This subsequently led to a major rethink of how QAcould be made more eý cient. In Britain, there was widespread agreement on the need tobuild a structure of quality assurance bodies with mutual acceptance of approvals to avoidmultiple assessments’ (Warner, 1977, p. 7) and this eventually led to the adoption of a newBritish standardÐ the BS 5750Ð by British industries in 1979. In adopting the BS 5750,organizations were required to establish, document and maintain an eþ ective quality systemthat would demonstrate to all customers that they were committed to quality and able tomeet their quality needs. The International Organization of Standardization’s ISO 9000series of standards for quality control systems have since superseded the BS 5750 and aretoday widely accepted by companies world-wide as a guarantee of a company’s qualitypractices. Through certi® cation to a recognized quality standard like the ISO 9001 or ISO9002, companies are able to assure customers of their adherence to a comprehensive qualitycontrol system, and also be rid of the plague of multiple assessments which have burdenedsuppliers in the past ( Juran, 1995b).

Besides standards, the QA era also saw companies turning their attention to measuringquality costs. Prior to the 1950s, there was a belief that the trade-oþ for improving qualitywas increasing costs. This long-held belief was disputed in Juran’s Quality Control Handbook,where he stressed the need for organizations to measure costs of quality (COQ). He describedquality costs in terms of avoidable and unavoidable costs, where unavoidable costs were costsassociated with prevention activities such as inspection, sampling and other quality controlactivities, while avoidable costs referred to the costs associated with defect and productfailures such as costs linked with scrap, repair, rework and complaints handling. Juran placedgreat emphasis on the failure costs, terming it as `gold in the mine’ because he stronglybelieved that they could be reduced through quality improvement opportunities. ThroughJuran’s work, managers were shown that expenditures on prevention were justi® ed if theywere lower than the cost of product failures.

In 1956, Feigenbaum (who also made a made a major contribution to the subject ofCOQ) took Juran’s ideas a step further by introducing the concept of `total quality control’(TQC). In Feigenbaum’s own terminology, TQC was seen as:

an eþ ective system for integrating the quality development, quality maintenance,and quality improvement eþ orts of the various groups in an organisation so as toenable production and service at the most economical levels which allow for fullcustomer satisfaction (Feigenbaum, 1983, p. 6).

By this de® nition, he meant that high quality would not result if manufacturing worked inisolation from the other functional areas in the organization. Instead, he proposed that

. . . to provide genuine eþ ectiveness, control must start in the design of productsand end only when the product has been placed in the hands of a customer whoremains satis® ed (Feigenbaum, 1983, p. 11).

The philosophy behind Feigenbaum’s TQC was that there must be participation andco-operation among all divisions, including marketing, design, engineering, purchasing,manufacturing, inspection and so on. But fearing that quality, which is everyone’s job, wouldbecome no one’s responsibility, Feigenbaum suggested that TQC be buttressed and serviced


by a quality department, whose only area of specialization is product quality and whose onlyarea of operation is in the quality control jobs.

At about the same time that quality costing and TQC were being developed, anotherbranch of the quality movement was introduced: reliability engineering. Reliability engineer-ing depended even more heavily on the principles of probability theory and statistics sincethey originated from the post-war growth of the aerospace and electronics industries in theUSA. The aim of reliability engineering was to àssure acceptable product performance overtime’ . In contrast to conventional QC, which focused on `time zero performance or perfor-mance when tested prior to shipment’ , reliability engineering evolved to develop tools andprocedures that would contribute to reducing ® eld failures of durable products ( Juran,1995a). According to Garvin (1987), its focus was to adapt the laws of probability to thechallenge of predicting equipment stress. The popularity of reliability engineering was evidentespecially in the USA, where companies went as far as establishing reliability engineeringdepartments within their QC functions.

In the USA, another signi® cant development in QA was the introduction of the principleof zero defects. The `zero defects’ programme was essentially quality control in its mostextreme form, whereby quality was stringently de® ned às an absence of failures’ . It originatedin the early 1960s in the Martin Company, which was building Pershing missiles for the USArmy. The design of their missiles was sound, but management found that high quality couldonly be achieved through inspection. It decided to oþ er workers incentives to reduce defects,and in 1961 the company completed a Pershing missile with `zero discrepancies’ . Buoyed bythis success, the management of the Martin Company accepted a challenge by the US Armyto deliver the ® rst ® eld Pershing a month ahead of schedule, with zero defects, and with allequipment fully operational within 10 days of delivery.

Two months of feverish activity followed the challenge; management asked all employeesto contribute to building the missile exactly right the ® rst time since there would be no timefor the usual inspections. The managers worked hard in motivating the shop-¯ oor employees,and in February 1962 the Martin Company delivered on time a perfect missile that was fullyoperational within 24 hours. This experience appeared to show the rest of defence industrythat zero defects is possible if a workforce is trained and there is top-down motivation. TheMartin Company’s example also appeared to show that zero defects is achievable when goalsare set for workers and eþ ort is made to give workers constructive criticism. The basis ofzero defects was therefore seen to lie in changing the attitudes of employees (Garvin, 1988),and was fundamental to the ideas of Crosby (1982).

The QA era showed the importance of the prevention approach to quality and the needfor the quality philosophy to transcend production functions. This prevention approachrequires not just the use of a set of quality management tools and techniques, but thedevelopment of a new operating philosophy and approach, which requires a change inmanagement style and thinking. It requires teamwork across various functions to help in® nding the root cause of problems and pursue their elimination (Dale et al., 1994).

Total quality management

While much has been said about the quality movement in the West, it is to the Japaneseachievements that attention must be turned to understand the state of contemporary qualitymanagement. Japan’s progress in building up their quality status has been remarkable; fromher pre-war reputation for consumer product shoddiness, Japan rebuilt itself into a leadingworld economy and a quality leader for many consumer goods. As Cole (1998, p. 45) notes


`the new quality paradigm which was developed in Japan between 1955- 1980 emerged fromthe sense of crisis following the devastation of World War II’ .

After World War II, Japan was battling to get its economy moving again. The loss of thewar was perceived by the Japanese to be due to the enormous technological gap betweenJapan and the USA (Lillrank & Kano, 1989). Further, with the end of the war, many largeJapanese corporations that had been supplying the military forces found that they had losttheir chief customer. They were faced with converting to producing civilian goods, whichthey had little experience in; and selling their wares in a market that were accustomed totheir reputation for shoddy goods (Nonaka, 1995).

As part of the rehabilitation process, aided by the US occupation forces, teams of USexperts were sent to help the Japanese build new industrial strategies. Notable among thiswas the work of the Civilian Communications Section (CCS) of the Allied Forces’ GeneralHeadquarters: in charge of all telegraph, telephone, radio and broadcasting services in post-war Japan, the CCS was instrumental in bringing US engineers to improve the Japanesecommunications network.5 As a direct outcome of the US experts’ recommendations, CCSbegan management seminars for top level executives in the Japanese communicationscompanies. Among the topics covered by these seminars, the communication equipmentmakers had an early introduction to quality control.

While the communication industry bene® ted from training in quality control techniques,the rest of post-war Japanese industry was not formally introduced to statistical qualitycontrol until Deming’s visits to Japan in 1950. Dr Deming played a key role in instilling thequality philosophy among the Japanese industrialists when he addressed top managers andengineers on the methods and philosophy of W. A. Shewhart. In his 8-day lectures toengineers (sponsored by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers ( JUSE)) in Tokyo,Osaka, Nagoya and Hakata, Deming covered the use of control charts and acceptancesampling, and participants were encouraged to practise the theory learnt using data fromtheir own factories during the course. Reception to Deming’s approach to quality wasextremely warm, and JUSE continued running a series of conferences and lecture programmeson management topics, including quality control. By 1974, it was claimed that some 5000top Japanese executives were trained (Morrison, 1994); other sources cited that between1950 and 1970 JUSE had taught statistical methods to 14 700 engineers and thousands offoremen in Japan (Deming, 1982).

While the Japanese companies seemed to adopt quality control whole-heartedly,Deming’s advice,6 ironically, fell on deaf ears’ in the USAÐ his message failed to spreadamidst the complacency of post-war America, where customers starved of goods wereuncritically happy to accept abundance again. The Japanese, in contrast, recognized Deming’swork, and from the royalties and interest revenues contributed by Deming from the publica-tion of his 1950 lecture texts and the Japanese translation of his books, JUSE established twoprizes in recognition of advances in the ® eld of quality control in 1951: the Deming Prize,for individual contributions in the areas of education and service to the ® eld of quality control;and the Deming Application Prize, for the outstanding implementation and application ofstatistical quality control by companies. Since the 1950s, the range of prizes under theDeming Prize ùmbrella’ has increased: in 1958, the Deming Application Prize for SmallEnterprise was established, followed by the Deming Application Prize for a (company)division in 1966, the Japan Quality Control Medal in 1970 and the Quality Control Awardfor a Factory in 1973 (Nonaka, 1995). Today, the costs of the Deming Prizes are borne byJUSE, and although over four decades have passed since these prizes were ® rst established,the prestige of winning the Deming Prize has not waned. The Japan Quality Control Medalis also a high-status recognition in that it is only given to companies that have demonstrated


a sustained high level of TQC practices at least 5 years after receiving a Deming Prize (Imai,1986).

Deming, who returned to Japan in subsequent years for further lectures, was followedto Japan by Joseph M. Juran, another ex-employee of Bell Systems, in the summer of 1954.While Deming concentrated his lectures on SQC, Juran’s emphasis re¯ ected his roots inmanagement. Through his lectures, Juran changed the focus of Japanese industry from astatistical outlook to one that emphasized the responsibility of management to quality andproductivity improvement. He gave the reasons for his beliefs as such:

. . . there has been some over-emphasis of the importance of the statistical tools, asthough they alone are suý cient to solve our quality problems. Such over-emphasisis a mistake. The statistical tools are sometimes necessary, and often useful. Butthey are never suý cient ( Juran, 1954, p. 12 (preface to the Japanese edition ofQuality Control Handbook, Total Quality Control)).

Furthermore, whilst the audience of Deming’s lectures were mainly engineers (although his1950 visits to Japan included sessions with top management), Juran’s seminars includedmore intensive classes for the senior executives. Following the factory visits which he madein the Tokyo area, Juran conducted 2-day seminars for senior company executives, and 10-days courses for division and section chiefs. In his classes with the senior executives, heconcentrated on the managerial responsibilities in the quality function, in particular themanagers’ responsibility for policy-making, choice of quality design, quality planning for theorganization, and setting up measurement and review systems for quality ( Juran, 1954). Hislectures to the lower-level managers, however, centred on more operational topics like vendorinspection, process inspection, ® nal inspection and quality assurance. Juran’s lectures were adeparture from the statistical content of Deming’s teachings and, instead, emphasized theneed for quality control to have the understanding and support of top and middle manage-ment. Juran’s managerial approach to QC was deemed as `the beginning of a gradualtransition from statistical quality control to total quality control . . . and company-wide qualitycontrol’ (Ishikawa, 1990, p. 10).

Apart from the prominent contributions of Deming and Juran, three Japanese promo-tional organizationsÐ the Japan Management Association ( JMA), the Japan StandardsAssociation ( JSA) and JUSEÐ played a key part in providing the education and other servicesto Japanese industries, including training in quality control. These three organizations becamethe centres for setting up committees of experts to develop modern approaches to qualitycontrol. For example, JSA was dedicated to the promotion of standardization and qualitycontrol, in particular the spread of standards for industrial products. Even prior to Deming’svisits, JUSE was already oþ ering SQC seminars based on the work of key statistical luminarieslike Pearson and Shewhart, and also from the American War Standards. JUSE was alsoresponsible for translating foreign publications on quality control to Japanese, while at thesame time producing their own magazine, Statistical Quality Control. The basic statistical andQC methods were also translated into simple, easy-to-understand languageÐ what is todayknown as the QC Storyboard and the seven basic QC tools, and by 1957 the Japanese hadextended their QC training to shop-¯ oor and factory workers via the medium of radio(Lillrank & Kano, 1989). Through such means of mass education, it was able to ensure thatthe philosophy of quality control reached the very people who had ultimate control overpreventing defects and ensuring quality. As Ishikawa (1985) puts it:

If defective products are produced at diþ erent stages of the manufacturing process,even strict inspection cannot eliminate them. If instead of relying on inspection, we


produce no defective products from the beginningÐ in other words, if we controlthe factors in a particular process which cause defective productsÐ we can spare alot of money that is expended for inspections (Ishikawa, 1985, p. 20).

In 1958, a study mission was also organized by the Japan Productivity Centre ( JPC) to theUSA. Among the ® ndings of this mission, it was recommended that a counterpart to theAmerican Society of Quality Control (ASQC) be established in Japan and this, in duecourse, led to the formation of the Japan Society for Quality Control in 1971. Anotherrecommendation to have come from the JPC study mission was the adoption of qualitycontrol in the service industries.

By the 1960s, the progress of Japan’s quality movement was signi® cant, and the imageof Japanese products as being cheap and shoddy was no longer a problem in many industries(Kawabe, 1979). The liberalization policies announced by the Japanese government aroundthis time and the fear of greater foreign competition may have created some of the impetusfor the quality-related activities adopted in the early 1960s. In November 1960, the ® rstnational quality month was launched in Japan; the Q-marks and Q-¯ ags were also formallyadopted in the same year. In 1962, JUSE launched the magazine Quality Control for Foreman

to supplement the QC techniques training provided for this group of supervisory workers. Inthe ® rst issue of this magazine, the concept of QC circles, which allowed for voluntary workerparticipation on shop-¯ oor quality issues, was introduced.

With their grounding in QC techniques like brainstorming and the seven QC tools,7 theintroduction of QC circles in companies was seen as a natural progression for Japaneseworkers. Apart from seeking workers’ ideas for organizational improvements, the participativenature of quality circles also proved to be helpful in relieving the tedious specializationsbrought about by the conveyor system of production (Nonaka, 1995); the job enlargementrole charged on circles was also found to keep alienation and unrest out of the factory(Lillrank & Kano, 1989). While the West seemed to attribute the success of Japanesemanagement on QC circles, this was never further from the truth. The Japanese practisedwhat Ishikawa termed `company-wide quality control’ (CWQC) (also known in Japan asTQC). In contrast to Feigenbaum’s concept of TQC, where quality was the exclusive domainof QC specialists, the Japanese practice of CWQC proposes that èveryone in every divisionin the company must study, practise, and participate in quality control’ ; this eþ ectively shiftsthe responsibility of quality to all employees rather than a specialized department. Asemphasized earlier, education in QC techniques for everyone is seen as paramount in Japanesecompanies. Central to the Japanese philosophy of quality is the preference of customerorientation over production orientation, and this is re¯ ected in Ishikawa’s expression: `marketin’ rather than `product out’ (Ishikawa, 1985). The Japanese organizations also attempted tobreak down the walls of sectionalism and put into practice the ideas behind `treating the nextprocess as your customer’ . The Japanese CWQC philosophy also extended beyond theparticipation of employees within the organizational boundaries to include customers, sub-contractors, distribution systems, suppliers and aý liated (`keiretsu’ ) companies. The mentalityfor continuous improvement was also a Japanese attitude, termed `kaizen’ (Imai, 1986). TheJapanese also placed great emphasis on long-term planning and the involvement of all levelsof the organization in the planning process through a policy deployment process (Witcher &Butterworth, 2001).

TQM goes West

Total Quality Management (TQM) is more than a fad or a buzzword. It is evenmore than a technique for controlling and motivating employees. TQM is a challenge


to conventional management techniques and to the theories that underlie them.Therefore it cannot simply be grafted onto existing management structures andsystems. If its bene® ts are to be fully realized, then companies need to preparethemselves for organization-wide changeÐ including top management’s relin-quishing of power. Furthermore, TQM practices cannot be combined with strategicinitiatives, such as corporate restructuring, that are based on conventional manage-ment theories. The failure of one or both programs is inevitable (Grant et al., 1994,p. 25).

Western ® rms have had something of a `born again’ experience with quality management,following the realization by the 1970s that the Japanese economic miracle posed a competitivethreat, and this sparked oþ a strong interest in Japanese management techniques. Tuckman(1994, 1995) characterizes the development of Western interest in quality management asfollows:

First phase: late 1970s to early 1980s some experimentation with quality circles.Mostly aþ ects ® rms in direct competition with industrial sectors in which Japan hadconcentrated, for example, electronics and motor industries.

Second phase: during the 1980s major companies, often aþ ected by worldrecession concerned with control of suppliers and subcontractors.

Third phase: from the mid 1980s a growing concern with customer service,particularly in the service sector.

Fourth phase: from late 1980s penetration of concerns with `customer service’into areas which previously had not recognised the existence of customers (forexample, public services) (Tuckman, 1995, p. 67).

First phase: `Japanization’ and quality circles

Early reaction was characterized by denial.

. . . managers denied quality as a major competitive factor and/or they deniedJapanese superiority. To deny strong evidence, typically individuals require a cogni-tive mechanism that plausibly explains events in a diþ erent fashion. In this case, itinvolved blaming various other factors for their competitive problems with theJapanese. Cost competition based on low wages, Japanese access to cheap capital,government support, and manipulation of currency ratesÐ these all played promi-nent parts in this alternative and loudly voiced explanation. Singly or combined,these accounts protected existing beliefs from logical and empirical attacks thatasserted the superiority of Japanese quality. These accounts allowed managers toresist what otherwise might have seemed irresistibleÐ at least for a while (Cole,1998, p. 49).

From the late 1970s, however, there was a series of visits to Japan by Western management,the famous Paci® c Basin Study mission organized by the UK Department of Trade andIndustry in 1984. In the USA the 1980 NBC documentary If Japan canÐ Why can’t we?’ ,promoted the ideas of Deming in Japan in the 1950s, representing him as siren voice ofquality, ignored in his own land. Side by side we saw a Japanization’ literature developed(Ouchi, 1981; Pascale & Athos, 1982; Vogel, 1979). The irony that the ideas were originallydeveloped in the USA before being transformed after the war was not always appreciated.

Quality circles were seen as a critical vehicle for success and were introduced in Lockheedin the USA in 1974. In the UK quality circles ® rst appeared on the scene in 1978, when


Rolls Royce led the way. Quality circles took time to take root in the UK, with estimates ofsome 100 companies involved in 1980, increasing to 400 by 1985, largely con® ned to themanufacturing sector (Collard & Dale, 1989). Quality circles were seen as a major innovationthat would restore competitive advantage to ailing Western ® rms through increasing directparticipation, providing a tool to change organizational culture, and delivering enhancedbusiness performance (Hill, 1991). However, quality circles are now widely regarded ashaving failed, even though some did deliver improvements in business performance. However,as a vehicle to achieving change in employee attitudes and organizational culture, qualitycircles did not deliver. At best it produced a short-term improvement in attitudes, but thiswaned when their novelty wore oþ (Griý n, 1988). Lasting improvements were diý cult to® nd (Hill, 1991). Indeed, in practice quality circles never involved a very limited proportionof employees and had short life spans.

Second phase: Company-wide quality

By the mid-1980s, TQM’s introduction in to the UK `began in earnest’ (Tuckman, 1994,p. 740). TQM was seen as oþ ering the solution which QC never could. A key issue was thatquality circles has been implemented in the UK in relative isolation from a total qualitysystem. Thus, a wider commitment to quality improvement was demanded from employees.A key reason for limited impact of quality circles was the restricted participation of theemployees (often with less than 10% of the workforce involved). It was now argued that thevoluntary nature of quality circles sent an inappropriate message about quality’s importance:employees could opt out. In the new business environment this was no longer acceptable. Ifemployees wanted job security and good conditions, then the price to be paid was theacceptance of responsibility for continuous improvement.

The restructuring of manufacturing companies and the emphasis on cost reduction and¯ exibility led to an increase in subcontracting and outsourcing, which in turn raised concernswith the quality of suppliers’ work. This stimulated substantial interest in quality certi® cationas large manufacturers demanded that suppliers be accredited to minimum standards, andhence quality management practices were extended into the small-medium sized enterprise(SME) sector. In addition, the adoption of `just-in-time’ ( JIT) inventory control by manu-facturers involved the reduction of stock to the bare minimum. Suppliers to such a ® rm wererequired to deliver components as and when the production process demanded them.

This period also saw both government and multinational corporations keen to developa TQM infrastructure. In 1988 a group of 14 major companies set up the EuropeanFoundation for Quality Management (EFQM), whilst the UK government provided ® nancialsupport to organizations aiming to adopt quality accreditation standards. These were followedby other national awards in Australia and Hong Kong. (For a review of the various modelsand awards, see Dale (1999)). The European Quality Award (EQA) was set up in 1992 bythe EFQM to pursue a European equivalent of the American Malcolm Baldrige Awardestablished in 1987. It was designed to stimulate interest in the quality area as well asproviding a template for self-assessment and for recognition of quality management. However,proponents of its model claimed to have learnt from the Baldrige experience, being lessbureaucratic. The model sees customer satisfaction, people satisfaction and impact on society(results) as achieved through a company’s leadership driving its policy and strategy, peoplemanagement, resources and processes (enablers). This, according to the model, leads toexcellence in business results. Each of the nine elements is a criterion which can be used forthe organization’s progress towards TQM and thereafter to adopt improvement strategies.The award criterion is diþ erent from Baldrige in that it stresses business results.


According to Dale, the bene® ts of such awards are that they:

provide a de® nition and description of TQM which gives a better understanding ofthe concept, improves awareness and generates ownership for TQM among seniormanagers. They enable measurement of the progress with TQM to be made, alongwith its bene® ts and outcomes. Year-on-year improvement is encouraged and thisprovides the basis for assessing the rate of improvement. They force managementto think about the basic elements of the organization and how it operates. Thescoring criterion provides an objective fact-based measurement, gains consensus onthe strengths and weaknesses of the current approach and helps to pinpointimprovement opportunities. Benchmarking and organizational learning is facilitated.Training in TQM is encouraged (Dale, 1999, p. 432).

Third phase: Catering for the customer

Until the early 1980s the manufacturing sector was centre stage in the quality debate. Indeed,the ® rst US Baldrige award in the service category was not made until 1990. Similarly, themain professional quality quali® cationÐ membership of the Institute of Quality AssuranceÐstill has a very high engineering content, with such compulsory subjects as calibrationsystems, materials testing and metrology. However, from the mid-1980s we see a greaterinterest with issues of customer service. The nature of service organizations raised methodo-logical and conceptual issues in relation to the transfer of quality management practicesdeveloped in manufacturing (Lewis, 1999).

Fourth phase: Into the public sector

The late 1980s saw the take up of quality management ideas in the public sector (Clarke,1992). Quality management was seen as possessing the potential to facilitate a changeprogramme that would start to answer the principal criticisms of public services: their allegedineý ciency, wastefulness and remoteness from those whom they are supposed to serve(Walsh, 1995). Legislation that gave more choice to consumers, competitive tendering,increasing pressures to contain costs and to deliver value for money, more demandingcustomer requirements and the Citizen’s Charter all helped to create a climate conducive toa positive reception to TQM ideas. In 1995, the British Quality Foundation’s awards,originally restricted to `for-pro® t’ organizations, were extended to cover the public sector.However, a number of commentators have called for distinctive systems of quality manage-ment for public services and point to the dangers to be faced in an uncritical adoption ofprivate sector practices (Walsh, 1990). The lack of a supportive infrastructure for thedevelopment of quality management in the public sector is seen by some as a key barrier toTQM’s development. For example, Brockman’s (1992) comparison of TQM in the US andUK public sectors bemoans the lack of a British equivalent to the Federal Quality Institute(FQI) established in 1988 as a primary source of leadership, information and consultancyservices on quality management for federal government.

We have also seen very critical accounts starting to be published with regard to thepractice of quality management in the public sector (Kirkpatrick & Martinez-Lucio, 1995;Walsh, 1995). The success’ of such initiatives is often seen as being at the expense ofdeclining levels of service provision, job losses, the intensi® cation of work for public sectorstaþ , the undermining of trade union in¯ uence and employment conditions, and increases


in the level of stress-related illness and ill-health retirements amongst public sector employees.Competitive mechanisms ostensibly designed to improve quality seem to have as much to dowith driving down costs as promoting enhanced quality (Pollitt, 1993).

One theme, which overlaps with the quality philosophy, is the increased emphasis onùser responsiveness’ , and more attention to the wishes of the individual service consumer.But this is not as straightforward as it might seem: Do consumers understand what is onoþ er? Are they aware of resource constraints, or will they ask for the impossible? Finally,given the comparatively intangible nature of many public sector services, there is diý culty inreaching agreement over what is to count as `conformance to speci® cation’ (Walsh, 1995).While customers may desire `better quality services’ , it may not always be possible to specifywhat this means, or to develop an agreed method for measuring improvements. One attemptto solve this problem has been the centralized setting of precise standards and associatedaudits that are intended to guarantee levels of provision. Walsh notes how this move has,however, enabled politicians to distance themselves from responsibility for the managementand delivery of public services (Wilkinson et al, 1998, pp. 24- 32).

Conclusion

Quality has become the dominant managerial theme of the 1990s. What lies beyondit? (Drummond, 1995, p. 68).

Having traced the evolution of quality management, what about its future? There are anumber of distinct scenarios. An optimistic perspective would suggest that while therehave been setbacks for the ònward march’ of the quality movement, its principles andphilosophy are sound, its practices are a coherent shape and there is some poor evidence ofconsiderable improvements in quality. Failure is the result of implementation or a failure tofollow through and allow TQM to ¯ ourish. As Hilmer and Donaldson note in relation toshort-termism:

Most managers, however, after two years of eþ ort without dazzling results, tend tolose con® dence in the idea they began with, and start looking for another solution.Nor are investors and fund managers, at least in the West, likely to remain patientfor long periods. The experience of the Japanese and the Americans with totalquality management shows this. In the 1960s, the Japanese were working on quality,while the Americans were into management objectives. In the 1970s, the Americansadopted T-Groups and participation, while the Japanese continued to strive forquality. In the 1980s, the Americans shifted to strategic planning, mergers, andrestructuring. Meanwhile, the Japanese stuck with managing quality. Eventually,the Americans discovered ` total quality management’ ’ and wondered why theJapanese were so far ahead in managing for quality (Hilmer & Donaldson, 1996,p. 14).

Increasingly, doom and gloom prophesies have been made about TQM’s decline in promi-nence and popularity, with TQM written oþ as another, managerial fad that is already beingreplaced by the next generation of fashionable phrases and practices.

As Currie observes:

While TQM continues to be an important and popular management innovation andchange programme in the 1990’s, it has found new competition and new rivals inthe form of BPR and Process Innovation (Currie, 1999, p. 650).


However, despite academic scepticism about the intellectual credentials of TQM, there is anincreasing body of knowledge and a number of promising theoretical developments (Hackman& Wageman, 1995). There is a growing body of work on the extent of TQM and its impacton organizational eþ ectiveness. According to many of the studies, TQM can add value to anorganization’s competitive strategy. The majority of the studies’ respondents attribute a widerange of business performance improvements to the adoption of TQM. However, there areproblems with many of the studies. First, many were carried out by consultants or qualityassociations and sponsored by bodies with a vested interest in positive ® ndings on TQM.Second, there are methodological weaknesses in many of them, such as the use of very smallsamples, a concentration on large organizations, ignoring evidence on the performance ofnon-TQM companies and not controlling for industry factors. Third, the evaluations ofTQM’s contribution to organizational success, although sometimes based on relativelysophisticated techniques of analysis, have generally neglected to establish the extent to whichTQM was actually installed (Powell, 1995). Thus, a danger in many studies is that it isdiý cult to con® rm that it is actually TQM that is being assessed, rather than some othermanagerial intervention. For example, Hackman and Wageman’s (1995, p. 321) review of99 papers on TQM found only four which assessed the degree to which TQM was actuallyimplemented.

Finally, we would do well to heed the cautionary observation of Hackman and Wageman:

Although dinner may seem assured to a snake who notices a rabbit strolling nearby,there is no guarantee of nourishment. If the rabbit is extraordinarily large, it mayget stuck in the snake’s throat; snakes have, on occasion, died when their eyes weretoo large for their throat. And if the rabbit is just a baby, consumption and digestionare easy, but there is little real nourishment. Eating a baby rabbit is hardly worththe trouble it takes to catch it.

Organizational change programs, including TQM, can go wrong for the sametwo reasons that snakes sometimes have trouble with their dinners. One, the changesmay be so ambitious and involve such fundamental alterations of the social systemthat, for all their potential merit, the organization cannot accommodate to them.Espoused changes may appear to fail when in fact they never got implemented.Two, the changes may be more window-dressing then real, as in a program thatexhorts people to alter their behaviour but that requires managers to do little otherthan issue the exhortation. In this case, implementation is easy, but the oldorganizational structures and systems remain untouched and continue to generatethe same behavioural dynamics as before (Hackman & Wageman, 1993, pp. 335-336).

Notes

1. According to Shewhart, the aims of making quality quanti® able were twofold: (i) `To make it possible forone to see whether or not the quality of the product for a given period diþ ers from that for some otherperiod taken as a basis of comparison. (ii) To make possible the comparison of qualities of product for twoor more periods to determine whether or not the diþ erences are greater than should be left to chance’(1931, p. 44). To facilitate these measurements, Shewhart devised process control charts and statisticalsampling, which are still used in many production settings.

2. The detailed speci® cations established by the guilds, that ¯ ourished from the 11th Century until theIndustrial Revolution, included speci® cations for input materials, manufacturing processes and ® nishedproducts as well as for methods of inspection tests.

3. The guilds inspected the products of their members and used seals to identify products that had been


inspected by the guild and approved for quality. These seals also served to provide added quality assuranceto the buyers of the products.

4. This was the Engineering Standards Committee, the forerunner of what is today called the British StandardsInstitution (BSI).

5. The communications industry in Japan was targeted as its poor state was seen as a threat to the politicalstability of the country, and the Allied Forces, while depending on the Japanese system for their owncommunication needs, were also anxious to prevent misunderstandings and rumours leading to civil unrestand insurrection (Lillrank & Kano, 1989).

6. Deming was also one of the architects of the 8-day courses on SQC, which were widely conducted in theUSA during World War II by the American War Production Board. These lectures were the very samelectures, which were delivered to the Japanese engineers.

7. These seven tools of QC are the Pareto chart, cause-and-eþ ect (or ® shbone) diagrams, strati® cation, checksheets, histogram, scatter diagrams, and the graph and control charts.

References

American Quality Foundation and Ernst & Young (1991) International Quality Study (Cleveland, OH,Ernst & Young).

Besterfield, D.H. (1979) Quality Control (Englewood Cliþ s, NJ, Prentice-Hall).Brockman’s, J. (1992) Total quality management: the USA and UK compared, Public Money and Management,

October-December, pp. 6-9.BS 4778 (1987) Quality Vocabulary: Part 1, International Terms (ISO 8402, 1986); Part 2, Quality Concepts and

Related De® nitions (1991) (London, British Standards Institution).Buzzell, R. & Gale, B. (1987) The PIMS Principles: Linking Strategy to Performance (New York, Free Press).Chandler, A.D. (1977) The Visible Hand (Cambridge, MA, Belknap Press, Harvard University Press).Clarke, F. (1992) Quality and service in the public service, Public Finance and Accountancy, October, pp. 23- 25.Cole, R. (1998) Learning from the quality movement, California Management Review, 41, pp. 43-73.Collard, R. & Dale, B. (1989) Quality circles. In: K. Sisson (Ed.) Personnel Management in Britain (Oxford,

Blackwell), pp. 356- 377.Currie, W. (1999) Revisiting management innovation and change programs: strategic vision and tunnel vision,

Omega, 27, pp. 647- 690.Dale, B. (Ed.) (1999) Managing Quality, 3rd Edn (Oxford, Blackwell).Dale, B.G., Boaden, R.J. & Lascelles, D.M. (1994) Total quality management: an overview. In: B.G. Dale

(Ed.) Managing Quality, 2nd Edn (London, Prentice-Hall), pp. 1-40.Deming, W.E. (1982) Quality, Productivity and Competitive Position (Cambridge, MA, Massachusetts Institute

of Technology, Centre of Advanced Engineering Study).Deming, W.E. (1986) Out of Crisis (Cambridge, MA, MIT Centre for Advanced Engineering Study).Drew, H.E. (1972) Quality: its origins and progress in defence procurement, The Quality Engineer, January,

pp. 7-8.Drummond, H. (1995) Beyond quality, Journal of General Management, 20, No. 4, pp. 68- 78.Feigenbaum, A. (1983) Total Quality Control, 3rd Edn (New York, McGraw-Hill).Garvin, D.A. (1987) Competing on the eight dimensions of quality, Harvard Business Review, November-

December, pp. 101- 09.Garvin, D.A. (1988) Managing QualityÐ The Strategic and Competitive Edge (New York, Free Press).Gonroos, C. (1983) Strategic Management and Marketing in the Service Sector (Cambridge, MA, Marketing

Science Institute).Grant, R.M. Shani, R. & Krishnan, R. (1994) TQM’s challenge to management theory and practice, Sloan

Management Review, Winter, pp. 25- 35.Griffin, R. (1988) Consequences of quality in an industrial setting, Academy of Management Journal, 31,

pp. 338- 358.Hackman, R. & Wageman, R. (1995) Total quality management: empirical, conceptual and practical issues,

Administrative Science Quarterly, 40, pp. 317- 342.Hill, S. (1991) Why quality circles failed but total quality might succeed, British Journal of Industrial Relations,

29, pp. 541-569.Hilmer, F.G. & Donaldson, L. (1996) Management Redeemed: Debunking the Fads that undermine our

Corporations (New York, Free Press).Hitchens, D. (1995) The history of managing for quality in the United Kingdom. In: J. Juran (Ed.) A History


of Managing for Quality: The Evolution, Trends and Future Directions of Managing for Quality (Milwaukee,WI, ASQC Quality Press), pp. 433-474.

Imai, M. (1986) Kaizen: The Key to Japan’s Competitive Success (Singapore, McGraw-Hill).Ishikawa, K. (1985) What is Total Quality Control? The Japanese Way (Englewood Cliþ s, NJ, Prentice-Hall).Ishikawa, K. (1990) Introduction to Quality Control (Tokyo, 3A Corporation).Jin, Q., Chen, M., & Lin, W. (1995) Ancient China’s history of managing for quality. In: J. Juran (Ed.)

A History of Managing for Quality: The Evolution, Trends and Future Directions of Managing for Quality

(Milwaukee, WI, ASQC Quality Press), pp. 1-32.Juran, J. (1995a) A history of managing for quality in the United States. In: J.M. Juran (Ed.) A History of

Managing for Quality: The Evolution, Trends and Future Directions of Managing for Quality (Milwaukee, WI,ASQC Quality Press), pp. 553- 602.

Juran, J. (1995b) Summary, trends, and prognosis. In: J.M. Juran (Ed.) A History of Managing for Quality:

The Evolution, Trends and Future Directions of Managing for Quality (Milwaukee, WI, ASQC Quality Press),pp. 603- 657.

Juran, J. (1951) Quality Control Handbook (New York, McGraw-Hill).Juran, J. (1954) Dr Juran 4 kaisha, koujou e iku, Total Quality Control, 5, pp. 12-17.Kawabe, N. (1979) Made in Japan: the changing image, 1945-1975. In: J.H. Soltow (Ed.) Essays in Economic

and Business History (Michigan, Michigan State University).Khan, M. & Hashim, M. (1983) A historical survey of quality standards and their development, Quality

Assurance, 9, pp. 63-66.Kirkpatrick, I. & Martinez-Lucio, M. (1995) The Politics of Quality: The Management of Change in the Public

Sector (London, Routledge).Lewis, B. (1999) Managing service quality. In: B. Dale (Ed.) Managing Quality, 3rd Edn (Oxford, Blackwell),

pp. 181- 197.Lillrank, P. & Kano, N. (1989) Continuous Improvement: Quality Control Circles in Japanese Industry (Ann

Arbor, Centre for Japanese Studies).Morrison, S.J. (1990) Managing quality: a historical review. In: B.G. Dale & J.J. Plunkett (Eds) Managing

Quality (Hemel Hampstead, Philip Allan), pp. 19- 32.Morrison, S.J. (1994) Managing quality: a historical review. In: B.G. Dale (Ed.) Managing Quality, 2nd Edn

(London, Prentice-Hall), pp. 41- 79.Nonaka, N. (1995) The recent history of managing for quality in Japan. In: J. Juran (Ed.) A History of

Managing for Quality: The Evolution, Trends and Future Directions of Managing for Quality (Milwaukee, WI,ASQC Quality Press), pp. 517- 552.

Ouchi, W. (1981) Theory Z. How American Business Can Meet the Japanese Challenge (Reading, MA, AddisonWesley).

Oxford University Press (1990) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 8th Edn (Oxford,Clarendon Press).

Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V.A. & Berry, L.L. (1985) A conceptual model of service quality and itsimplications for future research, Journal of Marketing, 4, pp. 41-50.

Pascale, R. & Athos, A. (1982) The Art of Japanese Management (London, Allan Lane).Pirsig, R.M. (1974) Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York, Bantam Books), pp. 183-200,

205-215, 223- 228.Pollitt, C. (1993) Managerialism and the Public Services (Oxford, Blackwell).Powell, T.C. (1995) Total quality management as competitive advantage: a review and empirical study,

Strategic Management Journal, 16, pp. 15- 37.Price, F. (1990) The quality concepts and objectives. In: d. lock & D.J. Smith (Eds) Handbook of Quality

Management (Aldershot, Gower).Reeves, C.A. & Bednar, D.A. (1994) De® ning quality: alternatives and implications, Academy of Management

Review, 19, pp. 419- 445.Schonberger, R.J. (1990) Building a Chain of Customers (London, Hutchinson Business Books).Shewhart, W.A. (1931) Economic Control of Quality of Manufactured Product (New York, Van Nostrand

Company).Singer, C., Holmward, E.J. & Hall, A.R. (Eds) (1954) A History of Technology, 1, p. 481.Taylor, F.W. (1919) Shop Management (New York, Harper Brothers).Tuchman, B.W. (1980) The decline of quality, New York Times Magazine, 2 November, p. 38.Tuckman, A. (1994) The yellow brick road: total quality management and the restructuring of organisational

culture, Organisation Studies, 15, pp 727-751.Tuckman, A. (1995) Ideology, quality and TQM. In: A. Wilkinson & H. Willmott (Eds) Making Quality

Critical: New Perspectives on Organisational Change (London, Routledge), pp. 54- 81.


Vogel, C. (1979) Japan as Number One: Lessons for America (Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press).Walsh, K. (1990) Managing quality in the public sector, Management Education and Development, 21,

pp. 394- 400.Walsh, K. (1995) Quality through markets, the new public service management. In: A. Wilkinson & H.

Willmott (Eds) Making Quality Critical: New Perspectives on Organisational Change (London, Routledge),pp. 82-104.

Warner, F. (1977) Standards and Speci® cations in the Engineering Industries (UK, National Economic Develop-ment Organization).

Wilkinson, A., Redman, T., Snape, E. & Marchington, M. (1998) Managing with Total Quality Management:

Theory and Practice (London, Macmillan).Witcher, B. & Butterworth, R. (2001) Hoshin Kanri: an innovatory process for mobilising company wide

eþ ort for realising top management goals, Journal of Management Studies, 38, No. 5, pp. 651- 674.

Copyright of Total Quality Management is the property of Carfax Publishing Company and its content may not

be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written

permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.

The Long and Winding Road

Documents