A strategic framework linking quality and productivity

The fact that quality and productivity go hand–in–hand and not against each other has gained much support in the literature. There is a need to develop a conceptual framework that analyses transitions in quality and productivity simultaneously and establishes a rationale to demonstrate their relationship explicitly. Companies keep investing in quality–related activities, in pursuit of excellence to a point that these investments become counter– productive. Such a conceptual framework can help management decision–making in quality–related investments. The primary objective of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework linking quality and total productivity which can act as a yardstick for management in quality–related decisions. The application of this conceptual framework is demonstrated by a hypothetical example.