The True Challenge of Generating Continual Quality Improvement

Abstract

Continual quality improvement (CQI) or total quality management (TQM) is currently the "rage" in American management. This essay argues that CQI/TQM will be just another management fad unless executives recognize the true challenges of CQI: (a) to marry inquiry and action in a way that transforms our current paradigms of both science and power; (b) to guide the organization and most of its managers through multiple developmental transformations, requiring at least a decade; and (c) to accept that, even as a leader and a proponent of CQI, openness to self-transformation is necessary as a condition for exercising transforming power.