The Scottish Quality Management System: an interim evaluation

This paper reports a survey conducted with some 398 organisations that had been compelled to implement a TQM framework for business improvement that was subsequently audited. It records the initial results of an almost 70 per cent response rate from organisations with up to seven years’ experience of the system. Despite a significant dependency upon the system for their survival, the survey suggests that a very substantial majority of respondents have not espoused the TQM philosophy, or benefited from the process. Some parallels are drawn with the perceived and, in some cases, real compulsion that attaches to ISO 9000 and, in particular, the possible implications for ISO 9000‐2000.