Exploring TQM's impact on the causal linkage between manufacturing objective and organizational performance

Total quality management (TQM) has been recognized as a competitive advantage for a firm's success. Nonetheless, little of the literature has mentioned TQM's influence on the causal linkages between manufacturing objective and organizational performance. Thus, this paper aims to explore the patterns of TQM practice and manufacturing objective as well as their associations with organizational performance improvement by using stepwise regression and canonical correlation analysis. Case studies were also performed to demonstrate our results. The result supports the strong linkages of TQM and manufacturing objective as well as organizational performance. In particular, under distinct TQM practice groups, the manufacturing objective attainment performs differently when it is pursuing organizational performance. This study concludes that for high TQM practice firms, flexibility and delivery time are currently what TQM contributes most for pursuing organizational performance. Otherwise, in order to compensate the disadvantages of other manufacturing objectives, low TQM practice firms should foster their service quality so that their organizational performance can be improved.