An academic paper that attempts to formalize Deming's management philosophy into a testable theoretical framework. The authors identify seven key concepts from Deming's work — visionary leadership, internal and external cooperation, learning, process management, continuous improvement, employee fulfillment, and customer satisfaction — and propose causal relationships between them. This paper is significant because Deming himself resisted formalization, arguing that his system-of-profound-knowledge was a holistic framework not reducible to separate variables. The paper's effort to make Deming's ideas "legible" to management academics both advanced and potentially distorted his message. Free PDF via ETH Zurich.