Carol-
I agree with your assessment of Scott's work. I've also found him thought provoking.
I think part of the problem is that ASQ is going through an identity crisis. Are they a statistics oriented organization? Are they the ISO kingpin in the US? Are the focused only on mfg? Are they focused on all age groups (ex. Koala Kids)? Is training a primary objective? If so, should it be at the local or national level?
The other part of the problem is that I believe people and organizations are slowly coming around to the idea that "quality" isn't just for groups labeled "QA", "QC", "QE", etc. Quality is everyone's responsibility. For example, the last company I was at dismantled their whole quality organization several years ago and melded these people and their responsibilities it into manufacturing, engineering, and the development groups as appropriate. In some cases their responsibilities remained the same, in other cases their responsibilities were evenly distributed to process and development engineers and were reassigned as process engineers. If other companies are making similar shifts, ASQ's target audience is becoming more diluted.
One final thing that has bothered me, is that lately I get the impression that ASQ is always looking for a quick buck. For example, they have recently created a certified six-sigma black belt with training programs that are quite expensive (like Scott eludes to in his article) and they charge somewhere around $100 I believe for a copy of the ISO 9000 standard, even for the soft copy. Are you kidding me?
Tom