CHAPTER 8

Total Quality Management

The organization is one of mankind’s all-time great inventions. An organization is intended to operate as one unit, with all its parts in efficient coordination. But, too often, it does not. The parts operate at disparate levels of efficiency, or they overlap, or they work against one another’s best interests—therefore against the best interests of the organization as a whole. There is misunderstanding and miscommunication …. Things get done, progress is made. But not enough of the right things get done as well as they should. Progress … does not meet expectations.

Kepner and Tregoe (1997, p. 1)

Introduction

In the quotation above, Kepner and Tregoe (1997) point out the difficulty of performing work within ...

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