This paper aims to assess whether Total Quality Management (TQM) is harder toimplement than other business strategies. In order to accomplish this objective we have adopted a two-stage methodology. Firstly, we carried out an extensive review of the literature to identify the rates of TQM implementation failure estimated byresearchers and practitioners. Secondly, we compared these rates with those estimated for other organisation-wide transformational efforts and explored the extent to which the obstacles to TQM implementation and to the implementation of other business strategies differ. Based on the literature reviewed and on the comparative analyses performed, we conclude that while it is widely acknowledgedthat the implementation of TQM can be a difficult task, significant uncertaintyremains as to what the exact rate of failure is. Furthermore, the analyses suggest thatthe rates of failure and obstacles to TQM implementation are similar to thosepresented by other business strategies, and therefore, there seems to be no groundsto assume that TQM is more difficult to implement than other business strategies.These findings have implications for researchers and practitioners and open upseveral avenues for further research, which are also discussed in this paper.
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