Total Quality Management, Operational Performance and the Role of Innovations

Abstract

The competitiveness of today’s business environment is rapidly increasing than it has been in the past decades. In Sri Lanka, large-scaled organizations experience a low level of operational performance during their peak seasons. (MTI business review, 2019). An organization should have achieved operational performance in order to increase the organizational success (Venkatraman and Ramanujam, 1986). Therefore, it is important to identify the ways or the tools that they need to implement in order to achieve the desired level of operational performance. A firm’s competitive advantage most of the time resides with its own organizational resources and capabilities (Barney, 1991). Therefore, focusing on internal practices to achieve the desired level of operational performance is incredibly important. Total quality management (TQM) practices and innovations are two contributing factors to achieve organizational performance and powerful business tools to gain competitive advantage. This study explored the impact of TQM on operational performance with the mediating effect of innovations in large- scaled manufacturing organizations in Sri Lanka in order to fill the theoretical gap, performance gap and the contextual gap identified using the existing literature.