In today's society, it is of great interest to constantly streamline and improve yourorganization for the better. How to do this, however, is not obvious and there are usually anumber of solutions, ideas and recipes that claim to solve various problems. When we in Sweden in the 90's started to focus more and more on quality - with the quality movement that started in the western world called TQM (total quality management) - both regarding the produce of our goods and services as well as how we organize ourselves, we think it isinteresting to study how managers themselves experience these organizational changes.

The study is based on Rövik's theories of administrative reforms. The analysis of the empirics was conducted through the two perspectives that are presented by Rövik; the symbolic perspective and the tool perspective. TQM is represented in this study by Self-Control, Quality Certification and Click and Collect.

The purpose of this study is to examine how store managers in the food industry themselves view TQM reforms that they have been involved in and if any of these recipes are loosely linked. The study uses a qualitative research strategy by interviewing a total of three respondents from both Coop and Ica. The respondents' reasoning could most easily be understood from a symbolic perspective, and the results also showed a difference in freedom of action and loosely linked recipes. Coop tends to loosely link these recipes to a greater extent compared to Ica. Nevertheless, both Self-Control as well as the Quality Certification can be best understood with a symbolic perspective as they, quite forcefully, offer meaning and legitimacy to organisations, rather than a voluntary solution to a, already defined, quality related issue within the organisations.