The early development of the total quality movement was substantially influenced by only a few quality “pioneers”: Deming, Juran, Feigenbaum, Crosby and Ishikawa. This article discusses their key contributions about quality. Argues that these US and Japanese quality “gurus” contributed a...

Offers an insight into the renaissance of project management discipline in the context of strategic management and organizational design, and the need for increased awareness of and organizational learning in the subject. Proposes a flexible framework to facilitate the efforts for general and...

Application of the outputs from new technologies, particularly revolutionary new materials, is changing the concept of “total quality”. As a result there will be new dimensions to customer satisfaction in the twenty‐first century, and providers of goods and services need new management...

Edited excerpt from John Macdonald’s latest book Calling a Halt to Mindless Change ‐ a Plea for Commonsense Management by Amacom. The article looks back at the “changeling children” of the quality revolution and opines that they were comparative failures. The origins of the term TQM and...

Quality has a long tradition in industry. In and after the Second World War we all focused on quality control. In the 1980s, quality management systems, as given in the ISO standards 9000 series, paved the way for a quality‐related business management. Advanced companies today are in a...

There is a paucity of research which seeks to develop TQM theories based on a deep and rich understanding of both socio‐political and technical issues. Resultant theories from such an inductive approach could potentially give a deeper insight into TQM, based on sound theoretical evidence....

Attempts to position TQM in relation to well‐established theoretical and conceptual constructs in management theory literature. Argues that this needs to be done to prevent TQM from sharing the same fate as other management fads that have, over the years, come, reigned at the height of their...

In an uncertain and competitive environment, organizations are forced to search for philosophies to guide performance improvement efforts. The current literature has paid considerable attention to two particular philosophies ‐ business process redesign (BPR) and total quality management (TQM)....