Five years before, a quality-circle initiative had failed due to resistance from a coalition of production and maintenance foremen and some middle managers. The story of its demise told Steve quite a bit about the company culture and about how resistance took shape. The blocking coalition had resented the imposition of quality circles, and resistance had galvanized when several of the circles degenerated into forums for airing complaints about supervisors. Some good ideas emerged from the quality circles, but few were adopted because the quality circles lacked implementation authority.