Managing Quality Fads

"If one thinks of successful competitive imitation as often involving creativity and innovation, in effect one interprets imitation as a learning process, an organizational and network learning process."

"A major characteristic of the modern quality model involves seeing improved quality as a strong competitive strategy."

"Top manufacturing managers were accustomed to thinking about quality as a low-level function involving inspection."

"The idea of learning from abroad, much less from the Japanese, about quality was literally incomprehensible for managers throughout much of the post-World War II period."

"There was literally a cognitive gap that did not allow U.S. managers to conceive of the possibility of a unity between low cost and high quality."

"Managers had an opportunity to follow the wrong path, and they often did."

"To achieve progress in quality improvement, not only a firm's practices but the very networks linking firms needed to be restructured."

"These networks provide a powerful dynamic of innovation, with each firm in the network experiencing economic and social pressures for improvement; the network is continually stressed to produce this outcome."

"Various players came to constitute an innovation and diffusion community."

"A paradox arises: individual and organizational learning can deepen expertise in existing technologies and routines while deadening the impulse to explore new ones."