Organizational Sustainability and TQM in SMEs: A Proposed Model

Hesham Magd ,Henry Karyamsetty

doi:10.7176/ejbm/13-4-09

Abstract

Organizational sustainability has become of great interest, and a high priority in today’s business environment by practitioners and researchers. Successful implementation of sustainability practices is becoming the cornerstone of organizational survival, success, superior performance, and competitive advantages. For organizations to be sustainable, organizations must determine working models on how to modulate organizational operations, and therefore the purpose of this paper is to critically attempts to offer an insight into the determining factors that influence organization sustainability in SMEs and assess the role of TQM towards achieving business sustenance. In the context of SMEs, they were chosen due to their vital key role in sustainable development and their dominance in any nation’s economy and contribution. In achieving the objectives of the study, explorative and descriptive analysis of literature were performed to offer a better understanding and develop a framework for SMEs. The study findings concluded that realizing the benefits of sustainability is dependent on the extent of activities performed by SMEs and the level of employee participation. The study revealed further that there is a significant correlation between TQM and sustainability based on the effective implementation of the proposed model of sustainability dimension. Keywords: Sustainability, SMEs, TQM, Sustainable practices, Employee participation, Top management commitment. DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/13-4-09 Publication date: February 28 th 2021

Highlights

Sustainability is becoming a priority for every organization as a global concern in today’s environment (Sancha et al 2016)
This paper analyzed the empirical studies done by various researchers on the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM) and organizational sustainability in the context of SMEs
While the effectiveness of an organization in realizing the benefits of sustainability depends on the extent of practices, presumed to result in achieving sustainability notwithstanding the level of employee participation in the overall operating structure

Summary

Introduction

Sustainability is becoming a priority for every organization as a global concern in today’s environment (Sancha et al 2016). Organizational sustainability is a business strategy mainly focusing to identify resources available and allocating them effectively for the present and future needs for sustainable business growth considering economic, social, and ecological environment setting (Wales 2013). There is an increased focus globally on organization sustainability envisaging companies to improve their integral capacities by identifying factors that inherently lead to business sustenance and performance (Adebisi & Bakare 2019; Ljunghom 2016). To drive organizations towards sustainability in business, it is vitally essential to identify factors and dimensions that influence and managing them effectively towards organizational goals. Further organizational sustainability depends on sustainable development practices proportionate to firms’ size, business level, organization structure, and strategic planning involving the three sustainable dimensions (Batista & Francisco 2018)

Objectives

Methods

Findings

Discussion

Conclusion