Cultural Assumptions of TQM

One aspect of total quality management (TQM) that doesn’t seem to be addressed is the cultural assumptions made by its proponents. By this I don’t mean the quality-focused culture, or the corporate culture that TQM seeks to replace (or at least modify). Instead, I mean national culture.

Both W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) and Joseph M. Juran (1904-2008) developed their managerial theories over their entire lifespans, based on their experience working at Western Electric and for the U.S. Government, but it was in post-war Japan that they had their first opportunities to implement their theories.

Much later (in the 1980s) did American industrialists begin requesting the services of Deming. According to Goetsch & Davis (2021, p. 12), Deming was not received as warmly by Americans as he was by the Japanese. In fact, “Deming’s attitude toward corporate executives in the United States can be described as cantankerous at best.”

How much of Deming and Juran’s theories of management hinge on their experience in post-war Japan? Japanese culture has a reputation for being hierarchical which implies deference. According to Chara Scroope (2025):

Japanese society is generally collectivistic, whereby people often view themselves and others as members of a collective unit or group (whether it be uchi or soto groups, a family group or a broader social group). In this sense, members of a group hold collective responsibility (rentai sekinin) for the performance and actions of an individual. For instance, if one or a few members of the group indulge in poor behaviour, all others are collectively blamed. In turn, harmony (wa) is an important part of interpersonal relationships. As a cultural concept, harmony implies a sense of unity and conformity within a group, whereby interdependence may be emphasised over independence.

At the time Deming and Juran were teaching the Japanese about TQM, Japan had just lost World War II. They were a beaten people, an occupied nation. In fact, Deming's first visit to Japan was in July 1950, and the Allied occupation wouldn't end until 8 September 1951. Emperor Hirohito, their leader throughout the war, was considered divine in Japanese culture. Following Japan's surrender in World War II, the U.S. pressured Hirohito to renounce his divinity.

This is diametrically opposite to American culture, where rugged individualism reigns. The self-made man is an American invention, and our freedom and independence follow from this.

Does it even make sense to apply a management philosophy to Americans that was developed and tested on a culture so different from ours?

References

Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9^th ed.). Pearson.

Scroope, C. (2025). Japanese Culture – Core Concepts. Cultural Atlas. https://culturalatlas.sbs.com.au/japanese-culture/japanese-culture-core-concepts

Contrasting Deming and Juran

Introduction

W. Edwards Deming (1900-1993) and Joseph M. Juran (1904-2008) were early proponents of quality driven management, and their theories of total quality management (TQM) are quite similar. In this paper, two ways that they differ are considered: their definitions of quality and the organizational scope needed to implement TQM. The implications of these differences are traced, and the value these differences have to TQM as a whole are described.

Defining Quality

One difference between Deming and Juran are their definitions of quality. If we take (Goetsch & Davis, 2021, p. 3) as reflecting Deming’s definition, then "[Q]uality is a dynamic state associated with products, services, people, processes, and environments that meets or exceeds expectations and helps produce superior value." This statement doesn’t specify whose expectations are met or exceeded, but it could be those of management.

In contrast to this, Juran considered quality to mean “fitness for use” for customer needs (Godfrey & Kinett, 2007). As such, Juran understood that with quality initiatives, a company could reach a point of diminishing returns. The phrase “’Good enough’ is never good enough” would thus be more applicable to Deming, whereas Juran understood that technical improvements can be more costly than the revenue they return.

Organizational Scope

A phrase attributed to Juran is that "all improvement takes place project by project." Without knowing the exact source and the full context, it is not clear exactly what is meant. Joseph DeFeo, who is a Juran Institute advisor, notes that Juran wrote:

If an organization wants to have quality leadership (like Toyota at the time) they must create a habit of continuous breakthroughs (not small improvements but large ones). To do that one must organize for those improvements, project by project. (DeFeo, 2022)

DeFeo also notes that such a project must be approved by management to secure budgets, personnel, and facilities. Thus are the advantages of managerial legitimacy.

Can this be taken as contrary to TQM’s all-or-nothing approach? Again, without knowing the source or context, it is difficult to tell. Assuming that it is, then improvement can be implemented on a team-by-team basis, and so adopting total quality management can be completed in a reasonable amount of time in a cost-effective manner.

Compare this with the Deming Cycle, which seeks to “link the production of a product with consumer needs and focus the resources of all departments (research, design, production, marketing) in a cooperative effort to meet those needs.” (Godfrey & Kinett, 2007, p.9) This is accomplished through five steps: consumer research (plan), create a product (do), check that the product was made in accordance to plan (check), market the product (act), analyze how the product performed in the marketplace in terms of cost, quality, and so on.

By advocating for a project-by-project basis, Juran makes it unnecessary to involve many members from outside a team, thus limiting bureaucratic creep.

Analysis of the Differences

There are doubtless other differences between Deming and Juran, but differing definitions of quality and organizational scope alone show some of the problems with TQM and how Juran can solve them.

First, TQM has a well-deserved reputation for inflating bureaucracy. This can be seen in the Deming Cycle where making or improving a product would require the collective efforts of the research, design, production, and marketing departments. Instead of requiring the work of a single team, Deming would require four whole departments.

TQM also favors process over innovation. In the Deming cycle, innovation is driven through two sources. First is consumer research – the customer wants a product and Deming will unleash four departments to produce it. Second, innovation is driven by the competitors, which is never a good thing! The Deming cycle doesn’t consider the possibility of “market surprise” products like the iPhone, for example. When the iPhone 1 was released on 29 June 2007, some people were already using mobile phones, but the iPhone created a new, larger market: the smartphone market. Competitors like Palm and Blackberry were still waiting for their customers to tell them what to make; Apple showed the customers what they could purchase. This point is also missed by the Juran Institute (DeFeo, 2017).

Conclusion

TQM is a broad theory that requires any organization adopting it to potentially undergo major changes in organization and culture. The characteristics of TQM given in (Goetsch & Davis, 2020, p. 4) – strategically based, customer focused, continual process improvement, freedom through control, and so on – are either not clearly defined or are somewhat overlapping. It makes sense that instead of throwing out “customer focus” along with “freedom through control”, we could save the reasonable parts and reject the highly questionable parts. Comparing Deming with Juran shows that this may be possible, that TQM can be modified to make it highly practical.

 

References

DeFeo, J. (2017, 18 April). Tired of Running from the Competition? Fulfill the Customer Needs. Juran Institute. https://www.juran.com/blog/tired-of-running-from-competition/

DeFeo, J. (2022, 28 October). Project by Project Improvement Revisited. LinkedIn. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/project-improvement-revisited-dr-joseph-a-defeo/

Godfrey, A. & Kinett, R. (2007). Joseph M. Juran, a Perspective on Past Contributions and Future Impact. Quality and Reliability Engineering International, 23, 653-663. https://doi.org/10.1002/qre.861

Goetsch, D. L. & Davis, S. B. (2021). Quality management for organizational excellence: Introduction to total quality (9^th ed.). Pearson.