ABSTRACT
I. OVERVIEW Lately the literature on quality and more specifically on TQM has suggested that TQM is not successful (Keck, 1995; Dobbins, 1995; Bemowski, 1995; Cottrell, 1992), is losing ground (Whyte and Witcher 1992; Wilkinson, Marchington, and Dale, 1993; Witcher 1993), and in some cases it has been pronounced dead (Duff, 1995; Fellers, 1995). Whether one agrees with these assessments or not is not the issue in here. The issue is that if indeed TQM is on a downward slide, why is this so and can we reverse the direction to an upward direction?
