Success factors in initiating versus maintaining a quality improvement process

A significant body of research has been aimed at identifying factors present within organizations that have enabled them to successfully implement and maintain quality improvement initiatives. None of these studies, however, focus on the differences in importance of these success factors in the initiation phase versus the maintenance phase of a quality improvement effort. We, therefore, present a framework for understanding said differences between success factors in the initiation phase and the maintenance phase. This framework was developed by studying highly successful organizations and the chronological development of their improvement processes.