Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the epistemological origin of Shewhart's and Deming's ideas in their development of a theory of quality. Design/methodology/approach – The approach takes the form of a literature review. Findings – Walter. A. Shewhart's and W. Edwards...

Innovation is often regarded as uniformly positive. This paper shows that the role of innovation in quality improvement is more complicated. The authors identify three known paradoxes of innovation in healthcare. First, some innovations diffuse rapidly, yet are of unproven value or limited...