Is innovation the future of quality management?: Searching for signs of quality and innovation management merging

Purpose Upcoming as well as mature industries are facing pressure as regards successfully managing operational excellence, and, at the same time, driving and managing innovation. Quality management concepts and practices’ ability to tackle this challenge have been questioned. It has even been suggested that there is a need to provide and promote an updated/changed, and even re-branded, version of Total Quality Management, merging quality management (QM) and innovation management (IM). Can such a shift then actually be spotted? The purpose of this paper is to explore and see if there are any signs suggesting that QM and IM actually are about to merge. Design/methodology/approach The study is based on literature reviews, document studies and interviews. Findings The paper highlights three signs indicating that QM and IM indeed are approaching each other, and that it is a movement driven from both sectors, e.g., in the work with new ISO-standards and the Toyota Kata framework. Originality/value The indicated development has fundamental and extensive practical implications. It will for example have to be followed by a similar merging of the two fields in the educational system, and in the competences of future managers.

[1]  David Snowden,et al.  The First Age: Information for Decision Support 1995: the Transition to the Second Age Complex Acts of Knowing: Paradox and Descriptive Self-awareness , 2022 .

[2]  Amrik S. Sohal,et al.  TQM and innovation: a literature review and research framework , 2001 .

[3]  Pak Tee Ng.  Relating quality and innovation: an exploration , 2009 .

[4]  Mike Rother,et al.  Toyota Kata: Managing People for Improvement, Adaptiveness and Superior Results , 2009 .

[5]  Cynthia F. Kurtz,et al.  The new dynamics of strategy: sense-making in a complex and complicated world , 2003, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[6]  R. Cole,et al.  When the pursuit of quality risks innovation , 2008 .

[7]  A. Steiber,et al.  Do TQM principles need to change? Learning from a comparison to Google Inc. , 2013 .

[8]  R. Garvare,et al.  Exploring quality challenges and the validity of excellence models , 2016 .

[9]  Mary J. Benner,et al.  Reflections on the 2013 Decade Award—“Exploitation, Exploration, and Process Management: The Productivity Dilemma Revisited” Ten Years Later , 2015 .

[10]  Mary J. Benner,et al.  Process Management and Technological Innovation: A Longitudinal Study of the Photography and Paint Industries , 2002 .

[11]  M. Tushman,et al.  Ambidextrous Organizations: Managing Evolutionary and Revolutionary Change , 1996 .

[12]  Su Mi Dahlgaard-Park.  The quality movement: Where are you going? , 2011 .

[13]  Tom Kelley,et al.  Prototyping is the shorthand of innovation , 2010 .

[14]  Uma Kumar,et al.  Relationship between quality management practices and innovation , 2012 .

[15]  Jiju Antony.  Six Sigma: a strategy for supporting innovation in pursuit of business excellence - invited paper , 2007, Int. J. Technol. Manag..

[16]  Steven D. Eppinger,et al.  Improving product development process design: a method for managing information flows, risks, and iterations , 2011 .

[17]  K. Eisenhardt,et al.  PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: PAST RESEARCH, PRESENT FINDINGS, AND FUTURE DIRECTIONS , 1995 .

[18]  S. Sitkin,et al.  DISTINGUISHING CONTROL FROM LEARNING IN TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT: A CONTINGENCY PERSPECTIVE , 1994 .

[19]  Robert G. Cooper,et al.  Perspective: The Stage‐Gate® Idea‐to‐Launch Process—Update, What's New, and NexGen Systems* , 2008 .

[20]  George S. Day.  ¿Es real? ¿Podemos ganar? ¿Vale la pena hacerlo?: la gestión sel riesgo y las recompensas en un portafolio de innovación , 2007 .

[21]  Robert E. Cole,et al.  Too Much of a Good Thing? Quality as an Impediment to Innovation , 2007 .

[22]  J. March.  Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning , 1991, STUDI ORGANIZZATIVI.