ABSTRACT
There is a lack o f congruence between the needs o f healthy individuals and the demands o f the formal organizations.
Chris Argyris1
Total quality management (TQM) has been attempted with varying degrees of success since it became the management buzzword in the late 1980s and early 1990s. By applying the philosophy and principles of TQM, many companies (e.g., Xerox, Motorola, IBM, Baldrige winners) have improved both competi tiveness and profitability. Others have not had such success. Indeed, it appears that substantially less than half have either stalled or fallen short of delivering real improvements.2 Many reasons have been advanced to explain this failure and near failure on the part of so many firms.3
