The purpose of this paper is to study the fundamentals of quality management, to examine the deeper layers of quality management and propose a tentative framework of its profound foundations.
The paper is conceptual, reviewing the quality management literature and connecting it with contributions from service management, organisational consciousness studies and eastern philosophy.
A model of quality management consisting of the levels of techniques, models and values has been the starting point. From this basis, an elaborated framework of the foundations of quality management, including different aspects of the values, functions and activity elements, has been developed.
Current approaches to quality management might be too superficial, which could be the cause of many implementation failures. In this paper, a deeper understanding is sought. A novel framework has been proposed that can provide a basis for further research into the profound nature of quality management. Further, implications that should be useful for managers are discussed.
