The Impact of Top Management Commitment on Total Quality Management Practice: An Exploratory Study in the Thai Garment Industry

Over the last three decades quality management has been increasingly viewed as a critical competitive weapon by firms around the world. Commitment of top management has been cited as one of the most important factors impacting the success for implementation of total quality management practice in a firm. This has been claimed by practicing quality gurus such as Deming, Juran and Crosby. In this research study, an extensive literature review in the field of total quality management assists to identify a list of critical factors (top management commitment, supplier quality management, continuous improvement, product innovation, benchmarking, employee involvement, reward and recognition, education and training, customer focus and product quality). To measure each factor a number of indicators are also identified. The reliability and validity of all the factors were tested and validated using data from 45 Thai garment manufacturing companies. Various statistical methods were employed for this test and validation. To identify the impact of top management commitment on the nine TQM factors a paired sample test between high-top and low-top management firms were conducted. Besides that step wise regression analysis was done to find the significant predictors of product quality construct for high-top and low-top management firms. From the analysis the findings emerges firstly, firms with high top management commitment implement the other nine TQM factors more rigorously than those with low top management commitment firms. Secondly, in high-top management firm two TQM factors namely employee involvement and product innovation are the primary predictors of the product quality. Finally, in firms with low-top management firm two of the eight TQM factors namely customer focus, and employee involvement are the primary predictors of the product quality.