TQM Practice and Institution Innovation in China

Quality is the language which helping product enters the world market. TQM, instead of traditional management, has been growing into the management mode of modern company. In last 10 years, TQM has made great progress in the whole world, but it did not get significant achievements in China. Although the exports from China always keep the image of “cheap and good” in international market, the qualified ratio of products calculated in domestic market is only around 75% and inferior and fake products are often exposed. Therefore, China needs to learn from the TQM experience and practice of advanced countries both in micro and macro field. The process from traditional management to TQM is based on not only corporate technology system, but also on social and institutional system. Our conclusion from China's case is that the international competitive advantage of individual company came from excellent product quality, the excellent product quality is based on excellent TQM practice, and the excellent TQM practice rooted in whole country's macro institutional system. Now, China is still in the stage of transforming public-owned-dominated planning system to individual-owned-dominated market-oriented system. There are many political and economic and social institutions and their policy, regulation, even ideology need to be innovated. Only by doing this, China's companies could follow the foreign partner's step, set up their long-term strategy and share profit with their employees and implement TQM completely to improve their international competitiveness.