From: EricMurph-AT-aol.com
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 1997 09:03:26 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: lost messages


Good stuff.  Yes, this is connected to what I was attempting to get at in my
previous post.  I have to admit that I feel somewhat ambiguous about TQM.  In
some ways it marks a shifts towards a new metanarrative for business, one
that moves away from the old model of profit maximization in which
shareholders are the only stakeholders, or concern of the organization.

Besides the shift in content, there is also a shift in categories.  Profit
maximization is purely physical, the attempt to achieve the limit of
differential calculus.  It is Newtonian, if you will.  TQM recognizes the
Other (albeit, I admit, in a sometimes twisted way!).  The statistical
process on which it is based derives from probability theory: a quantuum
approach to business.

It is also significant because in some small way it moves from descriptive
phrases to prescriptive ones.  Quality denotes the ethical.  It puts the
Other in a privledged position as Levinas decribes, attempts to discover the
Other's needs and work to satisfy them.

I don't know if you are familar with a book by Jeremy Rifkin entitled The End
of Work,  but there he argues that jobs will disappear as the result of
technological and social changes and that there will no longer be enough job
to support the entire population.  This will lead into a society of have/have
nots.

One of the proposals that Rifkin make is that the Civic Sector (ie.
nonprofits etc.), as opposed to the private and public ones, is the new
emerging sector.  He argues that this should be funded with profits (how this
can occur is of course the big question).  This would allow meaningful jobs
to be created that would allow us to address some of the social and community
issues that now go begging.

My point is that  TQM provides a ready-made metanarrative to support such a
social move.

Now, if such a shift occured, it would be pretty near utopian compared to the
present situation of global greed and the total inability of the "best
government money can buy" to address the real issues.  Anything beyond the
society of the spectacle would be an improvement.

You are right to point to the totalizing pretension of this movement.  One
scenario here is a gregarian, do-gooder neo-Victorian society devoid of
pleasure, transgression, and intensities. We must be on guard against the
ruses that can be used against us.