The relationship between critical success factors of total quality management and process improvement: a case study

Abstract

Companies’ urge to survive in today’s highly competitive globalised market and their attempts to maximise their profits gave birth to the concept of total quality management (TQM). TQM is still trendy and a great number of companies are actively implementing its rules, regulations, and procedures. However, the concept is rather complicated, culture-bound, and diverse and calls for further studies in new settings. Service section is one setting that has not received its proper attention in this regard. Therefore, we aim to examine the relationship between a group of TQM techniques called critical success factors and process improvement in service companies. To reach that end, we clustered our sample of employees based on their perceptions of TQM critical success factors and then compared the clusters’ level of process improvement. The results reveal that the level of the process improvement differs significantly between the established groups of employees. This suggests that companies’ different levels of ...