رابطه موجود بین شیوه های مدیریت کیفیت جامع و اثرات آن ها بر عملکرد شرکت

Recent research on total quality management (TQM) has examined the relationships between the practices of quality management and various levels of organizational performance. These studies have produced mixed results, probably because of the nature of the research designs used such as measuring TQM or performance as a single construct. Based on a comprehensive literature review, this study identifies the relationships among TQM practices and examines the direct and indirect effects of these practices on various performance levels. A proposed research model and hypotheses are tested by using cross-sectional mail survey data collected from firms operating in the US. The test of the structural model supports the proposed hypotheses. The implications of the findings for researchers and practitioners are discussed and further research directions are offered.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, previously unchallenged American industries lost substantial market share in both US and world markets. To regain the competitive edge, companies began to adopt productivity improvement programs which had proven themselves particularly successful in Japan. One of these “improvement programs” was the total quality management (TQM) system. In last two decades, both the popular press and academic journals have published a plethora of accounts describing both successful and unsuccessful efforts at implementing TQM. Like Chanticleer’s theory, theories of quality management have been under revision ever since. The early stages of empirical research in TQM have been almost exclusively limited to attempts at constructing instruments capable of measuring TQM practices as, for example, Saraph et al. (1989) have done, and with studies such as Garvin’s (1983) that compare TQM practices in Japanese and US firms. More recently, scholars like Mohrman et al. (1995) have channeled their research efforts into analyzing the relationship between practices of quality management and organizational performance on various levels. Recent studies such as the one conducted by Das et al. (2000) have started investigating both the relationships among techniques of quality management systems and the effects they have on performance. These studies have produced mixed results. This failure to obtain consistent results could be due to three significant differences among studies in terms of research design issues. First, in some studies such as the one conducted by Douglas and Judge (2001), TQM is operationalized as a single construct to analyze the relationship between TQM and firms’ performance, while others, Samson and Terziovski (1999) for instance, operationalize TQM as a multidimensional construct. Second, the levels of performance measured vary among the studies. Some studies operationalize performance only at operating levels as Samson and Terziovski (1999) do, while others like Douglas and Judge (2001) measure only financial performance; and still others as do Das et al. (2000), measure performance at multiple levels. Third, the analytical framework used to investigate the relation between TQM and performance also differs among the studies. In other words, when the data analyses are based on a series of multiple regressions (Adam et al., 1997, Mohrman et al., 1995 and Samson and Terziovski, 1999) or correlations (Powell, 1995), the studies fall short of investigating which TQM practices have direct and/or indirect effects on various levels of performance. In short, comprehensive studies trying to identify the direct and indirect effects of TQM practices on performance at multiple levels are rather limited and fail to respond conclusively to the following research questions:

This study contributes to the TQM literature by validating the direct and indirect relations among TQM practices and the effects of these practices on firm performance. With the exception of Flynn et al. (1995), the TQM practices investigated in this study represent a wider domain of TQM than the other studies in which direct and indirect effects of TQM practices on performance are identified. In addition, measurement of performance at three levels in this research reveals more insights than the other studies do into the relation of TQM practices to firms’ performance. It also sheds more light than they do on the relationships among three levels of performance: inventory management, quality, and financial and market performance. A by-product of this study is a refined version of the questionnaire constructed by Saraph et al. (1989) that can be used to measure TQM implementation without making excessive demands on the time of both respondents and researchers. The final TQM measurement model includes 30 items, as indicated in Appendix A. In addition, a scale on customer relations can be added in future studies as one of the techniques of TQM. Evaluating customer relations as a technique of TQM is becoming more viable because TQM organizations are customer focused. Measurement studies on TQM discussed in this paper, as a part of the literature review, provide measurement items for the scale of customer focus. As pointed out by Amundson (1998), researchers should broaden their focus to include more complex issues regarding TQM implementation rather than simply replicating studies that identify TQM practices. Given that the response rate and the length of a questionnaire are inversely related, the shortened version of the questionnaire presented in this study allows researchers to investigate the relation of TQM to other variables of interest without seriously hurting response rate.