Why Quality Circles Failed but Total Quality Management Might Succeed

Abstract This paper examines how companies have sought to develop employee participation in the quest for business improvement, from the quality circle (QC) fad of the early and middle 1980s to total quality management (TQM) at the end of the decade. Thirteen companies provide evidence of the strategies adopted and support previous findings that circles collapsed as the result of inadequate organizational design which encouraged managerial recalcitrance. Moreover, TQM departs from traditional ‘cycles of control’ and looks likely to institutionalize participation on a permanent basis, and managerial employees as well as office and shop‐floor staff now have more opportunity to participate in decisions. TQM is not another passing fashion, because it can meet the interests of employees while providing top management with an effective way of organizing in the new times.