The development and international diffusion of total quality management (TQM) as a normative theory are examined. It is shown that the main concepts associated with TQM contain an implicit Darwinist view of society made up only of institutions struggling to survive against increasingly ruthless competition. It is also shown that their development was the result of a process in which universities, large corporations, and government interacted to develop a response to the increasingly serious economic challenge that Japan presented to the United States from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. The TQM paradigm was taken up by U.S. multinational corporations and the leading business and management schools of the United States and disseminated throughout the world. It is concluded that TQM has an ideological dimension designed to help diffuse to private and public service institutions throughout the world the dominant U.S. view of society and economy at the end of the twentieth century.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Allen, G.C.1981. A short economic history of modern Japan. 4th ed. London: Macmillan .
2.
Bank, J., and B. Wilpert.1983. What's so special about quality circles . Journal of General Management9 (1): 21-37.
3.
Bensimon, E.1995. Total quality management in the academy: A rebellious reading. Harvard Educational Review65 (4): 593-611.
4.
Birnbaum, Robert.2000. Management fads in higher education: Where they come from, what they do, why they fail. New York: Jossey-Bass.
5.
Byrne, John A.1997. Management theory-Or fad of the month? Business Week, 23 June.
6.
Cusumano, A.1985. The Japanese automotive industry-Technology and management at Nissan and Toyota. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
7.
Deming, W.E.1986. Out of the crisis. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
8.
---. 1993. The new economics for industry, government and education . Cambridge, MA: MIT, Center for Advanced Engineering Study.
9.
Dennis, D.1995. Brave new reductionism: TQM as ethnocentrism. Education Policy Analysis3(9). Available from http://olam.ed.asu.edu/epaa/v3n9.html .
10.
D'Souza, Dilip. 1996. Silicon Valley East. New Internationalist On-Line 286 . Retrieved 21 December 2001 from http://www.oneworld.org/ni/issue286/silicon.html .
11.
Eales, R.1985. Multinationals and business schools. Multinational BusinessMonitor Quarterly: 10-17
12.
European Foundation for Quality Management.1989. Letter of intent to establish the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). Total Quality Management, February, p. 80.
13.
Feigenbaum, A.V.1961. Total quality control. New York : McGraw-Hill.
14.
Ferguson, C.H.1985. Chips: The U.S. versus Japan. In The information technology revolution, edited by T. Forester , 45-55. Oxford, UK: Blackwell .
15.
Fransman, M.1988. The Japanese system and the acquisition, assimilation and further development of technological knowledge: Organisational form, markets, and governments. In Technology and social process, edited by B. Elliott, 111-30. Edinburgh , Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.
16.
Gabor, A.1990. The man who discovered quality. London : Penguin.
17.
Head, S.1996. The new ruthless economy. New YorkReview of Books, 29 February.
18.
Helper, S.1983. Book review. Sloan Business Review25 (1): 70-71.
19.
Hill, P.1983. Reagan hosts his Japanese "alter-ego." Multinational Monitor, February, 10-14.
20.
Irwin, D.A.1994. Trade politics and the semiconductor industry. Working paper no. 4745, National Bureau of Economic Research.
21.
Juran, J.M.1991. Strategies for world-class quality. Quality Progress, March, 81-85.
22.
---. [ 1951] 1998. How to think about quality. In Juran's quality handbook, 5th ed., edited by J. M. Juran and A. Blanton Godfrey, 81-85. New York: McGraw-Hill.
23.
Kelly, J.1983. C.I.A. orders study of global auto industry. Multinational Monitor, April, 10.
24.
Kondo, Y.1993. Quality education in Japan. Total Quality Management4 (2): 115-25.
25.
Locke, R.R.1996. The collapse of the American management mystique . Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
26.
Maital, S.1984. The economic analysis of the Japanese firm. Sloan Business Review26(1): 77-78.
27.
Moore, Martha T.1995. Is TQM dead? USA Today, 17 October, p. 01B.
28.
Nelson, D.R.1994. The political economy of U.S. automobile protection. Working paper no. 4746, National Bureau of Economic Research.
29.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.1983. Long term outlook for the world automobile industry . Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .
30.
Palma, Gabriel.1981. Dependency and development: A critical overview . In Dependency theory: A critical reassessment, edited by Dudley Seers, 20-78. London: Francis Pinter.
31.
Roberts, J.G.1983. Captains of global trade. Multinational Monitor, October, 15-16.
32.
Shorrock, T.1983a. Nissan: Portrait of a global giant. Multinational Monitor, October, 4-6.
33.
---. 1983b. A political history of steel. Multinational Monitor, June, 18-22.
34.
Van der Wee, H.1986. Prosperity and upheaval: The world economy 1945-1980 . Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
35.
Warner, M.1996. Total quality management. In International encyclopedia of business and management, vol. 5, edited by M. Warner, 4884-901. London: Thomson Business Press.
36.
Wieseltier, L.1993. Total quality meaning. The New Republic , 23 March, 16.
37.
Womack, James P., et al. 1990. The machine that changed the world. New York: Rawson Associates.
