In the world of quantum improvement, managing paradigm shifts has aroused unprecedented interest among academics and practitioners. Better and better ways of managing business processes are needed to create sustainable improvement. Excellence is the product of a complex mixture of strategic components, which often exist in different paradigm curves, which need to be smoothed while the organisation transforms one quality era to the next. Proposes an empirically‐based framework of TQM transformation, following a synthesis of literature on quality management practices in winners of the MBNQA and EFQA. The framework incorporates critical factors of each phase of quality evolution, and hence implied sustainability of TQM implementation. The evolutionary path was identified as product, service, customer, and market‐based orientation, which were linked to corresponding conditions for sustainability, which could be empirically tested through advanced research. This framework broadens the scope of quality management and offers a tremendous opportunity to operationalise quality management as a universal and generically‐based corporate strategy.
