Doctoral TQM research: a study of themes, directions and trends

This paper reports the main findings of a study of a sample of UK Doctorate Theses with a research focus on TQM. Amongst the main findings is that the research outputs are mainly in the form of guidelines and frameworks and l ittle attempt is made to build upon previous research to create a meta mode l of TQM. It is also pointed out that the work undertaken is primarily retr ospective and there is little attempt to speculate on what the next generat ion of quality tools, techniques, and paradigms will look like.