Outlines the results of a departmental purpose analysis project undertaken with the administration section of Cumbria Social Service Inspection unit. The project compared the definitions of purpose and tasks perceived by administration staff with those of their main internal customers.

Purpose – Getting value from knowledge management (KM) means managing the way new knowledge is brought to bear on the business's practices, for value is added only through practice – not through talk. Though there are relationships between knowledge and practice, and the purpose of KM is to...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the theoretical interface between statistical thinking, the statistical method of the control chart, and contemporary theories of organisational learning in regard to processes and their improvement. Design/methodology/approach – Theoretical...

Describes an unusual quality improvement programme which started early in 1994 with a publishing company, MCB University Press. It points out the approach used, and progress made to date, 12 months on. The approach is described as insideout and outside‐in, meaning the focused creation of...

Focuses on an attempt to determine whether or not there is a link between TQM and learning organizations. Data from three TQM companies are tested against a series of building blocks for developing learning organizations. Total quality management tends to create the environment ecessary for...

Comments that Pen y Dre is a school in a socially deprived area of South Wales and that through their strategy of “Raising Achievement” they have succeeded in doubling their examination results and raising the self‐esteem of the school and local area over the past two years. Notes that the...

Notes that the seven basic tools of quality management document flow analysis, cause‐and‐effect variables, and linear patterns of process but that in organizational systems composed of human beings, data are not always regular, or logical. Comments that the real world of work does not...