Organisational quality ‐ a cognitive approach to quality management

Conceptually argues that quality is a cognitive issue and a process of continuous innovation. Adoption of such innovations requires understanding of the nature of an organisation and its customers’ cognitive domains. The conceptual arguments presented in this paper illustrate that integration of organisational and customers’ cognitive domains should be the central feature of any quality initiative undertaken by an organisation. Existing models, such as TQM, among others, may be adopted and applied with greater success if the organisation takes a cognitive approach to quality. The organisation needs to: identify the cognitive needs of its people in order to create shared values essential for a unified approach to quality; identify the cognitive needs of its customers to create an in‐depth understanding of their buying behaviours; and integrate the cognitive needs of customers to that of the organisation by aligning its values and resources to those of the customer. A conceptual model of organisational quality is presented.