The Moderating Impact of Total Quality Management on Supply Chain Management: Implication of Competitive Advantage

Abstract

Organizations are always looking for ways to sustain competitive advantage over others. One method to gain that advantage is to have an efficient Supply Chain Management process. Despite the efforts of implementing supply chain management, organizations find themselves with an inefficient supply chain management process and search for solutions to improve their supply chain management tasks. Previous researchers have suggested Total Quality Management as a plausible process for improving supply chain management. In addition, prior research has suggested methods of implementing Total Quality Management solutions that possibly overlap the Supply Chain management process. The overlap between the two processes could either enhance or damage an organization's current supply chain management processes that have been fulfilling organization requirements. Depending on the organization's relationships with third party logistics groups (3PL) and other supply chain partners, the implementation of total quality management could have a positive or negative impact on the supply chain management process. This study provides a conceptual framework for assessing the impact of TQM implementation in supply chain processes. Testable research hypotheses are presented for future empirical study.