Evaluating Quality Circles: The American Application
探讨美国企业引入日本质量圈实践后，因期望过高且缺乏评估而陷入采用-失望-放弃循环，分析其提升士气、生产力与工作质量的机制，并指出将其视为工作丰富化或人际关系技术是片面的。
In what represents a reversal in the flow of knowledge between the two countries, managers in U.S. organizations have begun to study and imitate the practices of their Japanese counterparts. The qualify circles programs that exist in many Japanese organizations are being widely adopted in U.S. organizations. However, the high expectations and lack of planned evaluation for the quality circle programs in many U.S. organizations suggests that quality circles are already in the adoption-disappointment-discontinuation cycle that has been characteristic of many other managerial fads. The authors present several reasons why quality circles can lead to increases in the morale, motivation, productivity, and work quality of workers and suggest that the conventional wisdom, which sees them as either a form of job enrichment or a human relations technique, is ill-focused. The types of organizational settings in which quality circles are most likely to be effective are discussed and suggestions are made regarding the proper evaluation of quality circle programs.