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Reports a survey which was carried out in 1990 to ascertain the level of training and research needs in the European business community. The results show that, although TQM initiatives are under way in many organizations, more collaborative research and development into TQM need to be undertaken.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the field of risk management in relation to the connection to quality management. It poses and attempts to answer three questions. What can quality teach risk management? What can risk management teach quality? What must both risk and quality management still learn? This is an area which has so far not been explored by the quality management fraternity.

The examination is built on more than 20 years' experience in the area of quality management and extensive involvement in recent developments around risk management (e.g. the Australian/New Zealand standard for risk management – AS/NZ4360, the development of a risk management model by the European Foundation for Quality Management, and the launch of risk‐based instruments by a number of private companies).

Amongst the major findings are that there are three types of risks: predictable risks that organisations know they face; the risks which an organisation knows it might run but which are caused by chance; and the risks which organisations do not know they are running.

It is pointed out that in the past the challenge for quality management professionals was to support process and design improvements, but the challenge of the future is to improve relationships in order to reduce and manage the most important risks.

The paper outlines how the quality management discipline can help with the management of these types of risks.

Strategic quality management represents a state wherein the organization’s total quality management (TQM) system is tightly interwoven with the strategy formulation process, thereby contributing to a sustainable competitive advantage. Numerous models have been proposed to describe how organizations can fully integrate strategy and TQM. Proposes that organizations undergo evolutionary stages on the way to full integration of strategy and TQM. The conceptual bases of the proposed model consist of organizational life cycles, stages of quality maturity and models describing the evolution of strategic management. Gives examples of corporations in the USA and the Asia‐Pacific region which provide preliminary support for the model’s validity.

Reports on a survey, carried out in 1990, to ascertain the level of training and research needs in the European business community. Attempts to define what exactly TQM means to an organization. Indicates that European organizations do not invest adequate sums of money in TQM education and training. Concludes that top management commitment levels could be improved, and that more relationships between businesses and academic institutions need to be forged.