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Five stages of quality culture can be identified: dormant, awakening, groping, action and maturity. Most companies being in the groping stage rely on “the flavor of the month”. Since early in the 1980s we can see a number of trendy quality strategies. Just applying what is trendy for the moment is not going to generate good results. Instead, it is necessary to choose effective quality strategies. These strategies are hands‐on leadership from the top of the organization, massive training aiming at cultural change and new knowledge, market orientation including customer focus and competitor studies, program for quality improvements. These four strategies include many activities, which have to be integrated into a strategic quality plan leading to a culture of total quality characterized by customer focus, process orientation, participation and empowerment, continuous improvement. The plan contains four components: commitment of top management, cultural change, improvements, systematic approach.

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.

Reducing a company's non‐value creating costs — the cost of poor quality — is one of the best ways of increasing profitability and competitiveness. The potential is considerable. The cost of poor quality usually corresponds to between 10% and 30% of total turnover. But to realize the benefits requires detailed information about the magnitude and distribution of these costs that is often difficult to obtain.