Integrated Management Systems: A Practical Approach to Transforming Organizations

"This is a thought-provoking book that will stimulate a constructive reevaluation of widespread management practices-and they badly need such reevaluation. If it does nothing else-and it does much more-it would deserve a serious reading."151;Russell L. Ackoff, Chairman, INTERACT, The Institute for Interactive Management

"Integrated Management Systems points the direction for the next leg of the quality journey by synthesizing success stories from diverse organizations into a broader set of best management practices."151;Ray Stata, Chairman, Analog Devices, Inc.

"Nothing would improve the performance of managers and organizations more than a deeper understanding of the potential and limitations inherent in management systems. This superb book, by three outstanding scholars, goes a very long way to that end."-Louis E. Lataif, Dean, Boston University School of Management

"A vast reservoir of diverse and profoundly rich experience with some of the most respected institutions such as GE, MIT, and IIASA has set Tom Lee up in pursuit of a lifetime dream. This book is the story of a fascinating journey in quest of a synthesis of the best management practices." -Jamshid Gharajedaghi, Managing Partner and CEO, INTERACT, The Institute for Interactive Management

"Finally, a book which offers pragmatics instead of polemics regarding the whole notion of quality and what it means to be a quality-based organization. This is no oneminute manager but a thoughtful and reflective guide to action." -Michael Lissack, Director, Organization Science-Related Programs, New England Complex Systems Institute and Editor-in-Chief, Emergence: A Journal of Complexity Issues in Organizations and Management

"Integrated Management Systems is unique in its leadership thinking and practice. It combines the association of experience, the capacity of intelligence, and professionalism required to lead in a turbulent world." -Robert W. A. Barbour, Director and Chief Executive, Northern Ireland Quality Centre

"East meets West in Integrated Management Systems: an innovative synthesis of American systems theory and Japanese TQM practice that will become the standard reference text for researchers and practitioners everywhere." -Dr. Eamonn Murphy, Director, National Centre for Quality Management University of Limerick, Ireland

Based on a profoundly important six-year study by the Center for the Quality of Management (CQM), "Integrated Management Systems" shows how successful organizations accomplish something unbelievably powerful: Creating their own particular ways of executing the scientific method. The authors worked with the cooperation of some of America's largest companies - Teradyne, Hewlett-Packard, Eastman Chemical, Ritz-Carlton — and of non-profit organizations including top hospitals and the U.S. Navy. They were surprised to find how radically successful systems differed from one organization to the next.

Yet the core of each was universal: Each organization had designed a system that gathered data about the organization's particular problems, developed theories, tested the theories, and finally documented and shared the results throughout the organization. Each successful organization's methods were unique much as the methods of each successful discipline within the sciences are unique. But less successful organizations had nothing comparable. And the processes through which the leaders in these organizations had gotten them on the right path had a great deal in common.

THOMAS H. LEE is President Emeritus of the Center for Quality of Management. He has also served as a senior manager at General Electric, a professor at MIT, and Director of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna, Austria.
SHOJI SHIBA is one of the world's foremost experts on TQM and the author of Four Practical Revolutions in Management.
ROBERT CHAPMAN WOOD is a researcher associated with the Center for Quality of Management and the Asian Management Center of Boston University. His management writings have appeared in Forbes and the Financial Times (London).