ABSTRACT
The international quality management (QM) standards that Russian automotive enterprises started to introduce in the 2000s have more than 20 years’ history in developed capitalist economies. This chapter provides background information on the origins and content of international QM concepts and will outline how they changed industrial work in Western enterprises. It analyses the diffusion of the international QM standards in the Russian automotive industry during the period of its internationalisation. The new “state of mind” implied the identification of workers and management with their enterprises and internalisation of new organisational values, such as customer orientation and continuous improvement. The diffusion of lean production in the automotive industry ran parallel to the development of an international QM standard ISO/TS 16949 specifically for the automotive industry. Local manufacturers remained protected from international competition by import duties even after market reforms came into force.
