James D Sideras*
During the latter part of the 20th century, total quality management (TQM) emerged as a global phenomenon for improving organisational performance. Yet, despite its extraordinary dominance, most TQM initiatives were unsuccessful, leading to its decline by the early part of the 21st century. This paper explores the development of a new TQM based model that can address the conceptual and implementation issues of conventional TQM. By integrating contemporary organisational concepts with TQM, a new quality framework, called EALIM—ethical, adaptive, learning and improvement model—was devised. EALIM’s framework presents an essential broadening conception of TQM that could yield increased success, since it is more suited to a postmodern context. In addition to being a meaningful contribution to TQM, this paper offers a broader understanding of organisational processes and decision-making, since any one organisational concept only offers a restricted view of a complex phenomenon. The development of EALIM also provides researchers the prospect of examining its applicability within a variety of settings.
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