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The authors address the failure of companies to reach a sufficiently mature stage of quality required to be truly competitive and to exhibit the characteristics of so‐called “excellent companies”. The authors set out to answer some hard questions identified during their research: for instance, why is it that companies know what they should be doing but fail to do it? Why is it that barriers to progress fail to be overcome? Why is there such a large gap between management theory and practice? Five themes emerge which offer a means of exploring these issues in greater depth in order to develop a way of resolving them: competitiveness ‐ the challenges faced by industry today; current “state of the art” strategic quality management ‐ where are we?; the learning organisation; the role of self‐assessment frameworks; performance management system approaches.

This research is mainly concerned with the reasons why many organizations remain rooted in the early quality eras and what prevents them from making the transition to the era of strategic quality management. The study examined the characteristics of 13 organizations at various stages of their quality initiatives. Interviews were conducted on a face‐to‐face basis using a semi‐structured questionnaire in order to obtain an in‐depth picture of each organization. The results enabled organizational profiles to be constructed, identifying in particular the key characteristics of those organizations which had successfully integrated their quality initiative into organization strategy. These findings provide useful learning for those organizations wishing to progress their quality initiatives.