Beyond the Quality Revolution: Linking Quality to Corporate Strategy

Business cares so much about quality because quality — however defined — can be clearly linked to some measures of economic value and business success. Given the relationship between quality — once achieved — and value, corporations have good reasons for remaining committed to the quality vision. But many firms are having a hard time applying quality principles throughout their operations.

Many of the TQM projects tackled by corporations thus far have focused on “natural” processes. In the manufacturing area, for example, most processes comprise easily identifiable tasks, the customers are known, and the success or failure of efforts aimed at quality improvements are fairly easily measured. Many companies are now struggling to extend the application of TQM tools to areas outside manufacturing. They are discovering that the key principles of quality improvement are often difficult to implement in the non-manufacturing world.

Perhaps most important, the art of managing a corporation — and in particular setting its strategic direction — is not typically thought of as a process. The way to make quality-improvement effective in such areas as customer service, marketing, and R&D is by having a clearly articulated strategy that ties all those efforts together and focuses the corporation — including top management — on strategic quality improvement.

Editor’s Note: though written back in 1991, this article offers an interesting look at how strategy formulations have evolved over the years.

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