Understanding the interrelationship between culture of quality, employee, and organizational performance

Abstract

Culture of Quality (COQ) is regarded as an important component of total quality management (TQM) however this is a relatively new emerging theme, compared to other concepts in the quality management domain. As a result, literature resources on this topic are relatively scarce and there is a lack of empirical validation of the COQ framework. This study therefore attempts to fill this research gap and aims to empirically investigate the dimensions of the COQ and their impact on organisational and employee performance. The study also explores the interrelationship between each dimension of COQ. A set of hypotheses are proposed and empirically tested based on the 120 survey responses mostly from the Asian region. The survey data was analysed using SPSS through descriptive analysis, reliability analysis, correlation analysis and regression analysis. Findings show that COQ dimensions; leadership emphasis, message credibility, peer involvement and employee ownership encourage better employee performance. The study further suggests that organisations should work on ensuring supervision from top to bottom, accelerating information flow, creating autonomous working environment and getting staff involved in strategic management. In addition, findings show that COQ factors also interact with each other in varying degrees. The study therefore addresses an important research gap by empirically investigating the COQ dimensions and suggesting that from an employee perspective, organizational performance can be accelerated through quality culture management.