Total quality management: empirical, conceptual, and practical issues.

The original total quality management (TQM) philosophy provides valuable interventions that are easily implemented in almost any organizational structure and that have caught the public eye despite some difficulties, such as the discrepancy between its idea of employee motivation and reality. However, internal problems are less likely to cause TQM to drop from popular usage than the lack of research indicating which practices have actual results, the dilution of the philosophy as it has become popular and the presentation of unrelated interventions as TQM.

In recent years, total qua