Sustaining process innovation in a quality environment

It has been argued that, from a global perspective, a total quality management approach may encompass both a control and a learning component (Sitkin et al., 1994). A balance between those two sets of activities is often recommended. But how do companies sustain innovation in a quality environment? Based on four retrospective and one longitudinal case studies, we find that: a) the nature and the degree of development of the quality environments seem to be associated with process innovation success in the initial and the final stages of the innovation project; b) other organizational elements seem to be necessary to sustain innovation especially during the implementation stage.