Total Quality Management and Just-in-Time Purchasing

Organization of the Book

The organization of this book follows the steps of the functionalist paradigm toward theory building: selection of a topic and statement of a research question(s); survey of the literature which leads to a model and a set of hypotheses; designing the research; analysis of data; and interpretation of the results in order to refine the theory (Gioia & Pitre, 1990; Schendel & Hofer, 1979). In Chapter I, the statement of the problem, theoretical foundation, significance of research and definition of terms are presented.

In Chapter II, the literature on the variables of the theoretical foundation—innovation, strategy and performance—is reviewed and relationships between them are established. In the second section, a historical ...