QUALITY MANAGEMENT: UNIVERSAL OR CONTEXT DEPENDENT?

Production and Operations Management · 2001 · Volume 10 · Issue 4

DOI: 10.1111/j.1937-5956.2001.tb00083.x

Abstract

Quality management has often been advocated as being universally applicable to organizations. This is in contrast with the manufacturing strategy contingency approach of Operations Management that advocates internal and external consistency between manufacturing strategy choices. This article empirically investigates whether quality management practices are contingent on a plant's manufacturing strategy context, by examining the use of process quality management practices—a critical and distinctive subset of the whole set of quality management practices—across plants representative of different manufacturing strategy contexts. The study strongly suggests that process quality management practices are contingent on a plant's manufacturing strategy, and identifies mechanisms by which this takes place.

Keywords

QUALITY MANAGEMENT, MANUFACTURING STRATEGY, CONTINGENCY RESEARCH, EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

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