ABSTRACT
Speaking to General Accounting Office (GAO) evaluators in 1991, Total Quality Management (TQM) guru Joseph Juran lamented how woefully inadequate our understanding was of his progeny’s impact. Wrote Juran (1991, p. 51): “As far as measuring the [TQM] results that have been achieved, there’s a big information vacuum out there. Hardly anything useful is going on as far as evaluating results.” Unfortunately, little has changed in the interim to negate Juran’s observation substantially. Indeed, a paucity of systematic and rigorous evaluative efforts still exists, thus prompting accusations that TQM is little more than a “religious doctrine” that admonishes the unwashed to “just do it, in the blind hope that results will follow” (Sims et al., 1992, p. 138).
