【正文】 . Managing quality In the development of quality management four to .ve distinctive steps can be (., Grabowski, 1997, p. 9ff). In the 1930s and 1940s managing quality meant ensuring a product’s quality through an inspection at the production process. The function of ‘‘quality control’’ has been digital in nature, in the sense that either a product was conform to or it was not. The goal was to deliver products with no failures. The second steparound the 1950s and early 1960s is the one of static quality assurance. Here efforts were directed towards guaranteeing ‘‘stable’’, lowvariance processes. Thereby product and process quality became intertwined. In the late 1960s then the phase of the integrated quality assurance started. This quality management approach acknowledged that quality emerges from all direct value adding phases and therefore also suppliers and customers were integrated into the quality management perspective. This has lead to the establishment of the ISO9000+norms. The total quality management approach as pursued since the mid1980s included in its perspective additionally the of stakeholder needs, thereby adding more dimensions to the customer oriented view. It included for example employees and the society in general and their needs as a basic driver of quality. So when describing the different phases in the quality management .eld it bees obvious that over time always additional elements have been incorporated into it. These new elements together with their interactions to the previously considered ones have built new layers in a hierarchy of quality. Approaches towards a management of quality have been limited in delivering contributions to solving problems which arise from the need for .exibility, handling shortening product and technology lifecycles and particularly in relation to the need for innovation in order to remain petitive on a global scale. In its latest model on how quality has to be managed the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) has integrated the concept of innovation . . Managing innovation Already in 1912 Schumpeter (1912) has recognized innovation as a central driver of economic development. But only lately with intensifying petition on global 內(nèi)蒙古工業(yè)大學(xué)本科畢業(yè)論文 3 markets and the need of bringing and effectiveness to higher (quality) levels, the issue of innovation and its management have bee a prominent .eld in research and practice. According to Bullinger (1994) an innovation is by the .rst economic utilization or application of an invention to achieve corporate goals. This has similarities to many others in some respects: .rst there is nothing said about the amount or the degree of innovation, second there is no statement about the nature of the innovation itself or its domain and third, it is clear that in order to implement an innovation a series of steps have to be undertaken, which stresses its process character no matter what type of innovation is considered. Innovation management is therefore about transforming an initial impulse for improvement via idea generation, screening, evaluation and implementation into a market success considering all fostering and impeding factors. It is not of what type the market is, external or internal to the pany. Innovations might have different time needs until implementation, depending on the type of innovation, evolutionary or radical, and their domain (see Fig. 3). While product and service innovations might be rather quickly introduced and implemented, changes of human behaviors and consequently of corporate cultures typically are more time consuming. It is the extent to which structural arrangements (Knight, 1967) are affected which is to be considered. . Managing quality and innovation On the most level, bining the concepts of quality and innovation might lead to two results: quality innovation and innovation quality. In both cases the .rst concept has a restraining impact on the this follows that quality innovation refers to a distinctive characteristic of