ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the theories and concepts underlying quality management and performance improvement. Quality is a perception of the level of value a customer places on an organization's outputs, and the degree to which these meet established specifications and benchmarks. Quality is reflected at both the institutional level and the process or departmental level. Quality management is a management philosophy focused on systematically improving performance and processes. Quality management is necessary to guide business and clinical performance improvement, and to achieve organizational competitiveness. Quality management professionals focus on improving quality and performance. Quality can be defined in different ways, making performance improvement more difficult. Improving quality is necessary to achieve better results, and a high-quality strategy can produce significant gains in strategic measures, such as market share, profitability, and overall competitiveness. Competitiveness is the ability of an organization to provide goods and services that are superior to those of rivals, and produce value for customers and long-term sustainability.
