ABSTRACT
The tools of Quality Management – the statistical tools used to transform process data into managerial control information – have been available in the West for long enough, have generally hung rusting and unused. If Power cultures are mainly to do with ‘pleasing the boss’, and Role organizations are concerned with ‘pleasing the system’, Achieve cultures are about ‘pleasing the team’. These are brother-bonding organizations, typified by the task-force or commando group of interdependent problem solvers. From the autocracy of the Power style, through the bureaucracy of Role and the meritocracy of Achieve, we come to the democracy of the Support culture. Every organization is a cultural mixed breed; none is a pure example of one particular style unsullied by any other. The ‘tools’ of statistical methodology, developed in the West and ‘exported’ to Japan over a generation ago, are finding favour with Western business.
