ABSTRACT
The concepts of quality and quality management now figure prominently in management courses, in management textbooks and on the agendas of management conferences. Prufrock (the name adopted by the columnist Rupert Steiner, when acting as a diarist for the UK newspaper, The Sunday Times) gives us a feeling for the lengths some actors will go to just to forge an association with the concept of ‘quality’. Writing in late 1998, the Prufrock diary, an ever reliable means of deflating egos, observed that:
THE government in Budapest has come up with a marvellous way to get journalists to — ‘help the national cause’ — it is giving them huge quantities of cash for writing positive stories. It is willing to pay a £550 reward under the guise of a competition called ‘Quality 98’ which offers prizes for articles promoting excellence in industry. The economics ministry says it has a million other ideas about how to reward journalists helping this national cause.
[The Sunday Times, 29/11/98)