Total Quality Management and managing diversity: A comparative study of Malcolm Baldrige and AACSB business school examiners

Total quality management (TQM) and managing diversity (MD) are two of the most popular business strategies on organizational agendas of the 1990's. However, presently, when many organizations consider implementing these two strategies, the strategies are seen as adversaries or competitors rather than allies. If organizations can realize the complementary nature of TQM and MD and begin to group or integrate these strategies into current activities, there exists an opportunity to increase the effectiveness of the implementation process for both strategies.;The purpose of this study is to provide a comparative analysis of the Malcolm Baldrige Award and the AACSB examiners' viewpoints concerning the similarities between TQM and MD. A secondary purpose is to determine if the examiners have actually seen quality organizations engaged in managing diversity practices. The overall importance of MD to quality organizations is also studied as well as various differences among and within the two groups of examiners.;Ninety-five Malcolm Baldrige Award examiners and seventy-nine AACSB examiners participated in the study. There was a 37.4% overall response rate from the participants who completed a questionnaire designed to assess the importance of MD. Analyses of the research propositions indicate that both the Malcolm Baldrige and the AACSB examiners believe that managing diversity is important to quality organizations. Moreover, the findings indicate that there are no significant statistical differences between the Malcolm Baldrige and the AACSB examiners in terms of the extent to which they have seen managing diversity practices in use in organizations trying to achieve quality standards.