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The concept of "quality" has been contemplated throughout history and continues to be a topic of intense interest today. Quality presently is addressed in numerous academic and trade publications, by the media, and in training seminars: it is perhaps the most frequently repeated mantra: among managers and executives in contemporary organizations. In a recent survey, executives ranked the improvement of service and product quality as the most critical challenge facing U.S. businesses (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry, 1990). Quality has been described as "the single most important force leading to the economic growth of companies in international markets" (Feigenbaum, 1982: 22).
A search for the definition of quality has yielded inconsistent results. Quality has been variously defined as value (Abbott, 1955: Feigenbaum, 1951), conformance to specifications (Gilmore, 1974; Levitt, 1972), conformance to requirements (Crosby, 1979), fitness for use (Juran, 1974 1988), loss avoidance (Taguchi, cited in Ross, 1989), and meeting and/or exceeding customers' expectations (Gronroos, 1983; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985). Regardless of the time period or context in which quality is examined, the concept has had multiple and often muddled definitions and has been used to describe a wide variety of phenomena.
Continued inquiry and research about quality and quality-related issues must be built upon a thorough understanding of differing definitions of the construct. Universalistic propositions describing the relationship among various variables and quality cannot be made when the meaning of the dependent variable continually changes (Cameron & Whetten, 1983). As we discuss, the literature linking quality to outcomes such as market share, cost, and profits has yielded conflicting results that are largely attributable to definitional difficulties. Increased understanding of these important relationships will occur only when the quality construct is more precisely defined.
In this article, we attempt to clarify and explicate definitions of quality by (a) tracing their history or "roots." (b) examining their strengths and weaknesses, and (c) describing the trade-offs inherent in accepting one definition of quality over another. We also discuss how theoretical relationships among variables change when different definitions are used, and we suggest several implications for future research about the quality construct.
ROOTS OF QUALITY DEFINITIONS
QUALITY IS EXCELLENCE
Significant discussions about quality, or good, were initiated by Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and other Greek philosophers. The ideal to...