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The purpose of this paper is to integrate process complexity as an object of analysis within effective quality management (QM).

This paper systematically analyzes different conceptions of complexity theory and characterizes process complexity from a QM perspective producing new insights how to address process complexity for continuous improvement.

The authors identified and specified four complexity characteristics, which we integrated in a holistic process complexity model (PCM). The author further developed the idea of internal and external process complexity and demonstrated that internal complexity needs to balance external complexity. Based on the PCM, internal process complexity can be analyzed and suitable management approaches can be selected, while conventional QM practices showed to be inefficient or even contra-productive when applied in the context of process complexity.

This research is adapted to fit the needs of production processes. The PCM is designed from a QM perspective.

The developed model allows companies to specify and characterize process complexity in order to reflect on the appropriateness of their process management approaches. Furthermore, it gives an additional perspective on process analysis for tapping the full potential of process improvement programs.

This paper combines complexity theory with QM.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

Using the backdrop of an (apparently) extended visit to the West Indies, analogies with key concerns of internal audit are drawn. An unusual and refreshing way of exploring the main themes ‐ a discussion between Bill and Jack on tour in the islands ‐ forms the debate. Explores the concepts of control, necessary procedures, fraud and corruption, supporting systems, creativity and chaos, and building a corporate control facility.

A discourse analysis of the cognitive viewpoint in library and information science identifies seven discursive strategies which constitute information as a commodity, and persons as surveyable information consumers, within market economy conditions. These strategies are: (a) universality of theory, (b) referentiality and reification of ‘images’, (c) internalisation of representations, (d) radical individualism and erasure of the social dimension of theory, (e) insistence upon knowledge, (f) constitution of the information scientist as an expert in image negotiation, and (g) instrumental reason, ruled by efficiency, standardisation, predictability, and determination of effects. The discourse is guided throughout by a yearning for natural‐scientific theory. The effect of the cognitive viewpoint's discursive strategy is to enable knowledge acquisition of information processes only when users' and generators' ‘images’ are constituted as objectively given natural‐scientific entities, and to disable knowledge of the same processes when considered as products of social practices. By its constitution of users as free creators of images, of the information scientist as an expert in image interpretation and delivery, and of databases as repositories of unmediated models of the world, the cognitive viewpoint performs ideological labour for modern capitalist image markets.

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