Interest in quality-related questions increased at the end of the twentieth century, when industrialization deepened and stronger international competition emerged. Quality became a high-priority management area in its own right, partly due to the influence of quality gurus, who represented the influencers of their time. Concepts such as companywide quality control, total quality control, and total quality management (TQM) were introduced, often by consultants, and used as Western approaches that could respond to the quality success attained by Japan following World War II. Quality-related research is ongoing, but a clearer theoretical base is needed to improve our understanding of the existing position of TQM. The purpose of this paper is to explore the content of TQM and the ways in which it can be interpreted in terms of its values, methodologies and tools. A review of the concept of TQM, including its history, was conducted, and the relationships among quality, Quality Management (QM), and TQM were clarified. An interpretation of TQM and the corresponding content is presented in this paper.