New ways of organizing the realization of customer value – a new challenge for the twenty‐first century

The twenty‐first century has been predicted to be the century of quality. Customers around the world will demand quality. Quality will be a success factor for business, and quality means a responsible use of resources. But, will this prediction be fulfilled and how will the organizations work to ensure quality and customer value? Certainly the ways to manage for quality will be quite different from what has been the case during the twentieth century. This is because of new market circumstances which call for new solutions. Considers factors such as electronic business, customer focus and the need to be ahead of the others. Suggests that the challenge for the next century will be how to ensure quality in a business world built on networks such as those of the value chain and the global electronic network.