Study On The Mechanism Of Quality Management Practices Impact On Innovation Performance:the Mediating Role Of Innovation Mental Models

With the global economic integration and networking constantly advancing, the importance of quality to maintain the survival and development of firms has become increasingly prominent, which provides new opportunity for firms to introduce and implementation quality management practices. Meanwhile, in complex and dynamic environment, innovation is increasingly become a universal winning order criteria for firms to gain sustainable competitive advantage. So, prevalent now in quality management practices taking excellence performance model as a representative, is there any conflict between this two kinds of heterogeneous management practice? Namely, quality management practice is favorable to promote or inhibit innovation? What is its influencing mechanism? This is an important theoretical and practical issues must be solved urgently. Unfortunately, the existing research conclusions are still differences, and this divergent conclusions will easily cause practitioners confused. Thus, clarifying the effect of quality management practices on innovation performance, revealing the mechanism of how quality management practices impact on innovation performance, forming logic and effective interpretation is particularly urgent.This dissertation aims to answer the fundamental question of this research, that "how quality management practices impact on firm’s innovation performance referencing and integrating quality management theory, social cognitive theory, innovation theory and contingency theory, according to the research paradigm of "input-process-output", following the logic of "practices-cognition performance" establishing the theoretical framework of "quality management practices-innovation mental models-innovation performance", exploring the following four closely related sub-questions step by step:First, how quality management practices influence on firm’s innovation performance in Chinese context? Second, what is innovation mental models mean and its dimensions? Third, what is the internal mechanism of innovation mental models impact on quality management and innovation performance? Finally, what are the different effects of quality management on innovation performance in different situations. In order to answer the above-mentioned questions, this dissertation explores these issues gradually and orderly by three sub-researches with combination of literature review, investigation, grounded theory and empirical research etc. Based on related literature review, analyzing the conception and dimensions of quality management practices, the first sub-research firstly identifies the structural dimensions of quality management practices under Chinese context, then, the research hypothesis and theoretical model is proposed, and structural equation modeling is applied to analyze the relationship between quality management practices and innovation performance. The results indicate that local infrastructure practices including leadership commitment, customer orientation and employee participation have positive effect on product and process innovation performance, and continuous improvement, process management core practices also are beneficial to the improvement of product and process innovation performance, but the positive relationship between supplier relations and product and process innovation performance is not verified. In addition, the interaction effect of infrastructure practice and core practice has positively influence on product and process innovation performance is also confirmed.In the second sub-research, grounded theory is applied to conduct research, we select15enterprises which introduced quality management practices as research sample, and in-depth interviews with24related members of the firms have been conducted to collect sufficient field data, then, open coding, axial coding, and selective coding have been used to analyze the interview data, which helps to discover the conception and its internal construct of innovation mental models. Grounded theory analysis results show that the innovation mental models are a multidimensional construct, including three sub-dimensions, they are:risk perception, initiative action and mutual tolerance. Based on the grounded theory analysis conclusions and previous related research, we further develop the measurement tools of innovation mental models, the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) results show that, the scale of innovation mental models has qualified reliability and validity, the empirical results further support that innovation mental models are the three-dimensional structural model, the result also laid the foundation for subsequent mediation mechanism exploration.On the basis of the grounded research, the third sub-research deeply explores and examines the mechanism of how quality management practices impact on innovation performance. Through the analysis of a large sample of data from nine provinces (municipalities) using structural equation modeling, we find that infrastructure practices can promote formation the mental models of risk perception, initiative action and mutual tolerance, then positive influence on product and process innovation performance. And the mediation role of risk perception and initiative action between core practices and product and process innovation performance has also been confirmed, but the mediation role of mutual tolerance has not been confirmed in this study. Overall, quality management practices can positively promote firm’s product and process innovation performance, and this positive effect is achieved through the mediation role of innovation mental models.Two types of moderating variables including market turbulence and technology-oriented strategy are introduced in the fourth sub-research, we detailed investigate the variation effects of quality management practices on innovation performance in different contexts. Multi-level regression analysis show that, market dynamics significantly moderates the relationship between infrastructure practices and product innovation performance, while the moderating effect is not significant for process innovation performance, and the relationship between core practices and process innovation performance is also negatively moderated by the market dynamics, but the moderating effect is not significant for product innovation performance; technology-oriented strategy can significantly promote the effects of infrastructure practice on product and process innovation performance, and it can also positively moderates the relationship between core practices and process innovation performance, but it cannot moderate the relationship between core practices and product innovation performance.Compared with the previous studies, we build the research framework of "practices-cognition-performance", and the main theoretical contributions are as following:First, this dissertation promotes and enriches local research of the effect of quality management practices on firm’s innovation performance. Based on Chinese practice context, we systematically investigated the influence of local quality management practices (infrastructure practices, core practices and their interaction effect) on innovation performance, and integrating contingency management theory to deeply explore its variation effect in different context. The dissertation can not only be beneficial to clarify the debate of Western scholars, deepen understanding the context and boundaries of the role of quality management practices, but also effectively promote and enrich the local related research of the relationship between quality management practices and innovation.Secondly, we identify and test the construct of innovation mental models. Taking mental models as starting point, we use grounded theory method to discover the construct meaning and its dimension of innovation mental models, meanwhile, the measurement tools of innovation mental models under Chinese context are developed. Refining the structural dimensions of innovation mental models and developing its measurement tools based on several practice prototype, will not only expands the meaning of general mental models, deepen our knowledge and understanding of the conception of mental models, but also provides new empirical evidence and research ideas to explore the original process of innovation of the firm.Thirdly, this dissertation clarifies and reveals the mechanism of how quality management practices impact on innovation performance. We conduct our research from the point of social cognitive perspective(mental models), on the basis of grounded research, and the mechanism of how quality management practices effect on innovation performance by the mediation role of innovation mental models is deeply revealed. This dissertation preliminary realized to explore the process mechanism from analysis the behavior representation to build cognitive theory. Which provides new perspective on comprehensive studying how quality management practices impact on innovation performance, and promotes the substantive progress in the research of quality management practices to a certain degree.