Confucius and Total Quality Management

With the rise of China as a key economic partner for the Western world, questions of the compatibility of managerial philosophies between East and West arose. In an effort to explore this issue, the authors take the sayings of Confucius as representative of Chinese managerial philosophy and Total Quality Management (TQM) as representative of the best in current western management thought. To operationalize TQM, the framework of the US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is used. The authors find considerable agreement between the thinking of Confucius and TQM.