1. In today's market, quality is becoming increasingly important.

It is only through the

pursuit of high-quality products and services that a high level of international
competitiveness can be achieved. This paper examines the relationship between quality
and competitive advantage from the perspective of strategic management accounting,
based on the value chain theory, and highlights how the quality and value chains are
intertwined in the operation chain. Enterprises can optimize procurement costs by
analyzing the upstream value chain; enterprises can optimize product life-cycle costs
and improve customer satisfaction by analyzing the downstream value chain.

2. Because of the diversity of the countries in Asia, multinationals face challenges in

implementing productivity improvement programs. From 1996 to 2000, a comparative
study on quality management (QM) was conducted in nine Asian countries. The goal of
the study was to figure out what was causing these issues. A standardized pretested
questionnaire was used to collect data under controlled conditions. The influence of
regional/country and microfactors on the evolution of quality management practices
into more sophisticated forms (TQM and beyond) was investigated.