Assessment and cultivation of total quality management organisational culture – an empirical investigation

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to conduct an empirical study on the role of total quality management organisational culture (TQM OC) in enabling Taiwanese companies to achieve a high level of business excellence. TQM OC is defined by TQM artefacts (also called practices), TQM core values (which indicate management commitment, customer focus, focus on fact, total participation and continuous improvement), and TQM underlying assumptions (which assume TQM benefits individual, organisation and society) that organisational members share about the appropriate behaviours prevailing in an organisation. In this study, seven Taiwanese companies, who are either National Quality Award winners or finalists, are investigated by using the approach developed by Chen, Ponce, and Jang [(2013) An approach on the cultivation of organizational culture toward TQM culture. The 16th QMOD conference, Portoroz, Slovenia]. It is intended to make an assessment of TQM organisational culture and come up with the necessary actions followed by the assessment to improve TQM OC. The result reveals that the performance of business outcome in the seven companies is positively correlated to their TQM OC. The implications of research findings in this empirical study are further discussed in the text.