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The twenty‐first century has been predicted to be the century of quality. Customers around the world will demand quality. Quality will be a success factor for business, and quality means a responsible use of resources. But, will this prediction be fulfilled and how will the organizations work to ensure quality and customer value? Certainly the ways to manage for quality will be quite different from what has been the case during the twentieth century. This is because of new market circumstances which call for new solutions. Considers factors such as electronic business, customer focus and the need to be ahead of the others. Suggests that the challenge for the next century will be how to ensure quality in a business world built on networks such as those of the value chain and the global electronic network.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the development of the quality movement in Sweden since the mid-20th century. The authors are convinced that a summary of the Swedish quality journey so far will offer important lessons for further quality improvements in Sweden and elsewhere.

The authors study how the quality movement has been included in the industrial agenda and how it has been adopted in student curricula and in research. The authors have a focus on how business leaders have learnt, adopted, adapted and innovated with respect to quality development. often in collaboration with academia.

Although the quality movement has fit well with the Swedish culture and that successful corporate leaders have successfully used the specific cultural characteristics there is still a lot to be learnt with respect to the public sector, where the ideas from the quality movement have problem to overcome institutional barriers.

The study is limited to the Swedish context.

There is a serious need to revitalize the public sector by getting leaders and politicians to understand the need for systematic quality improvement.

If future Swedish achievements with respect to healthcare and other social welfare elements are to once again become world-class, the public sector needs to be open-minded and collaborate with the industrial sector and academia to find cost-effective strategies for making quality improvements. However, the private sector must also be alert not to be overtaken by some highly active Asian countries.

Swedish large companies have been very successful in applying quality leadership – however, in the public sector, this has not been the case. Suggestions for improvement are made.