The relationship between total quality management and quality performance in the service industry: a theoretical model

Total quality management (TQM) has been widely considered as the strategic, tactical and operational tool in the quality management research field. It is one of the most applied and well accepted approaches for business excellence besides Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI), Six Sigma, Just-in-Time (JIT), and Supply Chain Management (SCM) approaches. There is a great enthusiasm among manufacturing and service industries in adopting and implementing this strategy in order to maintain their sustainable competitive advantage. The aim of this study is to develop and propose the conceptual framework and research model of TQM implementation in relation to company performance particularly in context with the Indian service companies. It examines the relationships between TQM and company’s performance by measuring the quality performance as performance indicator. A comprehensive review of literature on TQM and quality performance was carried out to accomplish the objectives of this study and a research model and hypotheses were generated. Two research questions and 34 hypotheses were proposed to re-validate the TQM practices. The adoption of such a theoretical model on TQM and company’s quality performance would help managers, decision makers, and practitioners of TQM in better understanding of the TQM practices and to focus on the identified practices while implementing TQM in their companies. Further, the scope for future study is to test and validate the theoretical model by collecting the primary data from the Indian service companies and using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) approach for hypotheses testing.