The critical factors of a successful adoption of TQM: Their existance in the Libyan oil sector

Few would argue that Total Quality Management (TQM) is one of the main accepted means for attaining organisational efficiency and effectiveness within a global marketplace. This thinking is even more pronounced in Developing Countries (DCs) of Africa, Asia, Caribbean pacific and Latin America where TQM is still in its infancy stage. This paper focuses on the effective implementation of TQM in Libya, a developing economy, through empirical investigation of critical quality factors. The research applies quantitative methods, which aim to test if key quality factors are essential to successful implementation of TQM. The survey findings indicate that leadership, senior management commitment and support, employee commitment and involvement, customer driven process and continuous improvement performance are central to the success of TQM implementation in the Libyan corporate environment.