US Managers Focus on Boosting Quality but Changing Corporate Culture Has Been Difficult

`TOTAL quality," the management technique that brought so much success to Japanese companies and acquired momentum over the 1980s in American business, is at a new juncture.

The pioneers of the quality revolution are passing the baton to a second wave of United States companies. What's not clear, however, is how broadly the business philosophy will take hold.

Several recent studies have knocked its efficacy as a management tool, suggesting that a third of businesses fail to make it work. But the blame, proponents contend, is due in large part to the quick-fix mentality of managers who ignore the need for major, long-term organizational change.

For the …