Integration of Six Sigma to traditional quality management theory: an empirical study on organisational performance

This paper integrates Six Sigma (SS) practices into traditional quality management (QM) theory by investigating its relation to traditional QM practices as well as its direct effect on organisational performance. This research used Path Analysis, a special case of SEM, through which the research hypotheses were evaluated. The paper uses survey data collected from US textile and apparel industry members. As an important contribution to previous literature, the results suggest that overall performance appears to be favourably and directly influenced by successful implementation of both SS and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Therefore, SS practices are concluded to directly impact organisational performance rather than being complementary to traditional QM practices. Considering the social and technical (soft and hard) dimensions of QM, our study has found a significant path to SS from process management (PM), but not from other soft aspects. This showed that textile and apparel companies' SS applications are dominated by hard quality practices, but they have not been yet widely linked with social dimensions such as CRM or Employee Relationship Management (ERM). Results also indicate that ERM has a direct impact on PM and CRM, and Top Management has direct positive links to CRM and ERM.