The role of socio-cultural, political-legal, economic, and educational dimensions in quality management

Quality management practices have recently flourished across the globe. In this research we review and integrate the literature by identifying and organizing significant research findings, and develop a conceptual model of the relationships between international environmental conditions (e.g. socio-cultural, political-legal, economic, and educational factors) and dimensions of quality management (e.g. strategic quality planning, customer focus and satisfaction, human resource development and management, information and analysis, management of process quality, and quality and operational results). The model developed here helps us move beyond examining the differences in quality practices across countries to an understanding of why such differences occur, and helps practitioners gain a better perspective on how quality management techniques can be adopted in different regions around the world.