Economic Calculation and Managerial Decisions: A Misesian Examination of the Successes and Failures of Total Quality Management (original) (raw)

While the Total Quality Management programs that were extremely popular a decade ago had many successes, there also were a large number of failures. This paper lays out some theoretical reasons for why these failures might have occurred. Our methodology is the application of the theories of the "Austrian" economists, including Ludwig von Mises, F.A. Hayek, and Murray N. Rothbard. We apply both the Austrian theory of the firm, as well as the economic calculation theories that Mises and Hayek developed, in order to explain why some TQM failures might have occurred.