Linkages between total quality management and organisational performance: an empirical study for Indian industry

Many companies across the world are engaged in adopting total quality management (TQM) to improve their operational performance. Managers are under increasing pressure to justify the value and contribution of TQM program expenditures to the performance of the organisation. This paper examines the need for establishing linkages between factors affecting TQM, as well as organisational performance and suggests a comprehensive assessment framework. A diagnostic instrument has been designed to test in Indian industries that have implemented TQM during the last decade. The result of this empirical study establishes the strong and weak linkages and helps to derive a few propositions for furtherance of the state-of-the-art in TQM. Such a study has the potential to contribute in providing feedback to manage and improve the TQM programs to better meet the needs of the organisation

TQM practices and knowledge sharing: An empirical study of Malaysia’s manufacturing organizations

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multidimensionality of TQM practices and its relationship with knowledge sharing as perceived by middle management employees in Malaysia's ISO 9001:2000 certified firms of manufacturing sectors. The data which were collected from a survey of 129 middle management employees in Malaysia were used to test the proposed research framework. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the measurement model, and the structural analysis was used to examine the research framework. The analytical results revealed that training and development, customer focus, and teamwork showed a positive association with middle management employees' knowledge sharing. This analysis is vital for senior managers of TQM companies that want to establish a knowledge sharing capability. Senior managers could focus their efforts on implementing TQM practices for building competitive knowledge sharing competencies