This exploratory research on a decade of Total Quality Management in one factory opens up the black box of the learning curve. Based on the organizational learning literature, we derive a quality learning curve that links different types of learning in quality improvement projects to the...

Little is known about the processes that make TQM effective. Why are some quality improvement projects more effective than others? We argue that TQM processes affect the way people create new knowledge, which in turn determines organizational effectiveness. We explore this by studying 62 quality...

Can a firm accelerate its learning curve if knowledge about the production function is incomplete? This article identifies a production line specifically set up to create technological knowledge about its production function through scientific experimentation (formal learning) as opposed to...