Gregory H. Watson - Chairman, Business Excellence Solutions, Ltd.President, International Academy for Quality, Helsinki, Finland

Quality is a basic concept of mankind. The core of its meaning comes from a Sumerian word that has the root meaning of “freedom.” Freedom is at the core of the democratic process through the idea of “equality” – a word whose etymology includes the notion of quality. Equality focuses on the common rights to a valuable quality of life. Using this interpretation, we can understand the concept “freedom” from this perspective as being free of waste, bigotry, abuse – elimination of these negative aspects of life’s experiences and thereby improve the quality of our life. However, over the years the interpretation and application of the word quality has come to have more and more diverse meanings. Quality can be considered a philosophy, methodology, vocation, field of study, movement, engineering discipline, attribute of a product or service, and outcome of a process. So, what is quality and how should a modern quality manager seek to apply the term to build a way of working that seeks to have continuously excellent outcomes? This paper will develop a “meta-definition” of quality that transcends its applications and serves as a foundation for a more coherent global human culture based on precepts of this quality definition.

Quality Definition, Philosophy, Leadership, Implementation, and Management