Abstract
How have social sciences been discussing quality circles (QCs)? This paper reviews these discussions, thereby sharing them with the professionals and practitioners in QCs. Few of the professionals and practitioners know the literature in QCs written by social scientists. This paper summarizes the literature from the perspective of sociology of work and industry. Sociology turns our attention to how our consciousness and actions are embedded in social systems, everyday practice, and temporal situations. Sociology of work and industry reveals these facts experienced through our work and occupational careers. Social sciences explain how and why QCs have been widespread in Japanese firms. Some of the factors are the low occupational barrier to non-professionals participating in quality control, flexible division of labor in workplaces, relatively open opportunities in which blue-collar workers promote to supervisors. The network built to disseminate quality control nationwide is also an important factor. QCs changed "modern" styles of labor management, from blue-collar workers as manual workers, to those as intellectual workers. In spite of skeptical observations, QCs are recognized as having some effects on motivation and training of blue-collar workers, through continuous improvements. QCs are expected to contribute to raising occupational capacities of ordinary workers.
