This session explores how quality management tools,
principles, and theories may be evolving into the next technology for managing—managing
for global sustainability.
The 1950s saw the emergence of a new management technology—managing for quality.
This new technology held the potential of replacing the established
command and control, hierarchical management technology formalized in the late
19th and early 20th centuries . . . and still largely dominant around the
world.
Although the full transformative potential of quality management has not been realized, its impact on productive activities
has been profound, enormous, and lasting.
However, even if the quality management technology had reached its full
potential to transform global management systems, there is no reason to assume
it would represent the ultimate, permanent form of management technology—technologies
continue to evolve. This session provides an interpretation of how
quality management continues to evolve and what that evolution implies for all
of us.