Journal article

Uncovering the faultlines in quality management

PJ Singh, A Smith

Total Quality Management and Business Excellence | Taylor & Francis (Routledge) | Published : 2006

Abstract

The field of quality management (QM) captured the serious attention of industry in the 1980s. Despite this attention, it has ostensibly failed to establish itself as a genuine mainstream management paradigm. Why has this been the case? In this paper, some of the reasons for this predicament are explored. Literature, especially that which analyses QM from a more critical perspective, shows that QM as a field has some major difficulties and problems that remain unresolved. These include: its limited strategic value; credibility problems; deleterious intra-competition between the dominant approaches to implementation; problems owing to the non-falsifiable way in which it is presented; lack of a..

View full abstract