Introduction Increased competitive pressures and global markets realities are forcing businesses to rethink and evaluate their competitive strategies and management practices with the aim of improving organisational performance. Defining, implementing and sustaining strategic quality orientation (TQM practices) is seen as the answer to sustained competitive performance. However, many businesses make the effort but fail to fully achieve Total Quality Management. The purpose of this paper is to explore the reasons or causes of failure to …showed first 75 words of 1743 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1743 total…and service quality - a clear active participation in the quality improvement by all employees. Again FedEx is a Baldrige Award winner. CONCLUSION Organisations are increasingly turning to TQM to sustain competitive performance. Many however, despite the effort, fail in their endeavour. We have listed above possible reasons for their failures and also made suggestion for successful implementation of TQM. Where possible, our recommendations were supported example from successful quality achievers and Baldrige Award Winners.