Can managers learn from fads? That is the question Robert Cole addresses in this insightful book about the various factors supporting and inhibiting organizational learning. A longtime student of the Japanese and American quality movements, Cole focuses on the response of American industry to the challenge posed in the early 1980s by high quality goods from Japan. While most American managers view this challenge as slowly but successfully met, many academics see the quality movement that emerged from it as just another fad. In seeking to reconcile these two views, Cole explores the reasons behind American industry's slow response to Japanese quality, arguing that a variety of institutional factors inhibited management action in the early 1980s. He then describes the reshaping of institutions that allowed American companies to close the quality gap and to achieve sustained quality improvements in the 1990s. Hewlett-Packard serves as an example of a company that made this institutional transition more effectively than most. Cole describes Hewlett-Packard's successful strategies while also pointing out the serious problems that it and other companies face as they attempt to adapt, improve, and go beyond Japanese practices. He also uses Hewlett-Packard, an exemplar of the highly decentralized company, to explore effective strategies for the creation, dissemination, and implementation of knowledge. Unprecedented as a scholarly treatment of the quality movement,Managing Quality Fads provides several important lessons for those interested in management decision making under conditions of uncertainty and organizational transformation in a rapidly changing business environment.

This text argues that the fads and buzzwords of management deflect critical inquiry and limit useful action because they present a "ready made" view of the world, which rejects the benefits of theoretical analysis and reflection. The book attempts to "unpack" the "guru industry" and the fads and buzzwords of management to provide a c̀ritical-practical' analysis, designed to allow readers to locate, to understand and to critique management fashion.

Birnbaum traces the paths of seven popular management fads in higher education, presenting a model describing their life cycle -- development, diffusion, consequences and eventual disappearance. He shows how management fads contributed to several major problems in higher education, and explains what academic managers can do to maximize the benefits fads can provide while minimizing their organizational costs. Index.

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In the newly revised seventh edition of Managing Quality: Integrating the Supply Chain, a decorated team of operations experts delivers a thorough introduction to quality management with an enduring emphasis on the importance of the supply chain for quality improvement. You'll obtain an integrated understanding of the customers, suppliers, technology, and people essential to maintaining and enhancing product quality in business. This latest edition combines the unifying theme of the supply chain with the latest developments in critical subject areas, like Lean, Six Sigma, and service quality. Updated vignettes and references maintain the currency of the work, while new content expands its scope and increases readability and accessibility for students of operations, quality management, and business.

Quality guru Dr. Joseph M. Juran has compiled an international history of managing for quality. In this landmark volume, Dr. Juran offers his thoughts on the history of managing for quality in the U.S. and gives a remarkable summary tracing worldwide trends and suggesting the likely directions for quality into the next century.

Managing Quality, Fifth Edition is an essential resource for students and practitioners alike. This popular and highly successful introduction to Quality Management has been fully revised and updated to reflect recent developments in the field Includes new chapters on Improvement Approaches, Six Sigma, and new challenges in Quality Management Combines the latest information on the ISO 9000 quality management system series standards with up-to-date tools, techniques and quality systems Material has been re-ordered and changes to terminology have been made to bring the book completely up to date Provides a popular resource for students, academics, and business practitioners alike