Determinants of the use of quality management practices in Latin America: the case of Argentina and Uruguay

Although the benefits of the use of quality management practices (QMP) in manufacturing firms are well known around the world, their implementation is quite different in different development contexts. This paper reports a study of the implementation of QMP in southern Latin American countries, specifically in 301 manufacturing firms in Argentina and Uruguay. No previous study has analysed this issue for this region. In addition, we compare the implementation of these practices in these two countries with that in Spain, through the use of the same questionnaire completed in both regions. In doing so, this paper achieves three aims. First, it provides new evidence about the diffusion of QMP in the River Plate (RP) region. Second, it provides new evidence on the implementation of QMP through cross-country comparison in different development contexts. Third, it tests a number of hypotheses about the influence of contextual and organisational factors on the levels of implementation of QMP in manufacturing firms in the RP region.