Joseph Juran: overcoming resistance to organisational change

Dr Joseph Juran is well known to most quality scholars. With a productive career spanning over three quarters of a century, his leadership and service in the field of quality management is measured in decades, not years. He has taught or consulted in at least 34 countries. He has written or contributed to hundreds of papers, speeches and dozens of books. His books have been translated into 12 or more languages. Among other things, he has pushed the concepts of the Pareto principle and Juran trilogy, and has increased the role of the human dimension in quality.1

Juran currently lives with his wife in Rye, New York, USA. He was born in Braila, Romania on 24 December 1904. His father was a shoemaker. At the age of 8 years, he and his family moved to Minneapolis, USA. The relocation was motivated by a desire to escape poverty and anti‐Semitism. His mother died from tuberculosis about 8 years later. As a child and young adult, Juran was no stranger to hard work, and he reported that he had about 16 jobs, including selling newspapers, being a grocery store clerk, book‐keeping and being a janitor, in the 12 years that he lived in Minneapolis. He learnt from all his work experiences, but he also pursued a formal education in addition to his demanding work schedule.1,2 In 1924, he obtained a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota. He married Sadie Shapiro in 1926. He later went on to obtain a law degree from Loyola University in 1936, perhaps motivated by the economic uncertainty of the Depression.

With a starting salary of $27/week, Joseph Juran worked at the Western Electric Hawthorne plant in Cicero, Illinois, USA, from 1924 to 1941. There, he was influenced by Walter A Shewhart. Juran, Walter A Shewhart3 and W Edwards Deming4 are considered to be the three key founders of the quality improvement movement. From 1924 to 1933, the Hawthorne plant was a remarkable place for its unique role in advancing the science of quality improvement, and for the studies by Elton Mayo on worker productivity.

Juran takes on Al Capone’s gang and wins

Half a block away from the Hawthorne plant in Cicero, Illinois, on 22nd Street was the headquarters of Al Capone’s gang. Capone was the most famous of America’s prohibition gangsters. He helped give Chicago the tough reputation it holds to this day. Juran remembered reports of rival gang members driving down 22nd Street passing the Hawthorne buildings with guns blazing as they battled for criminal supremacy. At Capone’s nearby gambling establishment, “The Shop”, Juran observed that one of Capone’s workers was so inept and so repetitive in running the roulette wheel that Juran collected and analysed data about this dealer’s behaviour and was able to win $100 as a result. In those days $100 was equal to several weeks of Juran’s pay.5

One supposes that the roulette wheel was rigged so that Juran could figure out a predictable non‐random pattern of results. One also supposes that Juran was wise enough not to win too much, to avoid the close attention of Capone’s thugs.

Juran’s career went from one highpoint to the next. During World War II, from 1941 to 1945 he was assistant administrator at the Lend Lease Administration for the US government. He taught industrial engineering as a professor and was department chairman at New York University from 1945 to 1951. In 1979 Juran created the Juran Institute, and in 1983 the Juran Foundation. Juran was active in creating, and is active in supporting the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, both directly as an individual and through the Juran Foundation. In 1997, the Juran Foundation was renamed the Juran Center for Leadership in Quality after being transferred to the University of Minnesota, Carlson School of Management.

Juran’s first publication was in 1923. It was a newspaper article on the game of chess. He is passionate about writing and went on to publish hundreds of articles and papers, and more than 30 books. Three of his books that have had an international impact are Juran’s quality handbook, Managerial breakthrough and Juran on quality by design.6,7,8

Juran contributed greatly to the human dimension of management. Other contributions that will be recognisable to most quality scholars include the Pareto Chart and the Juran Trilogy.