Research On Influencing Factors Of Enterprise Quality Credit

In recent years, the phenomenon of dishonesty in product quality appeared frequently, affecting the healthy and stable development of our society and economy. Under such circumstances, the government, academia, credit rating agencies involve in quality evaluation actively. Such introduction of the quality credit evaluation program does help society to identify the enterprises’ level of quality credit, and plays a role of encouraging enterprises to self-discipline. However, the theory ground of quality credit is paid little attention to. If the connotation of quality credit is not solved satisfactorily and the antecedent factors are not identified, conduct practical evaluation may be risky and the results may not be accurate. Therefore, it is of necessity to deeply analyze the theory of quality credit concept firstly, in order to support the evaluation practices. This paper, aiming at solving such problems, is composed of sub-researches as followings:exploring theoretical implication of quality credit (sub-research1) and identifying influencing factors of quality credit level (sub-research2). In the sub-research2, Business Ethical Climate is taken as a substitution variable of moral character, and Quality Management Practices (QMP) is taken as a substitution variable of quality management capability. We notice that in QMP research domain, ethics is becoming a new potential factor of suceesss of QMP but without empirical verification. Thus, we develop another sub-research3to test such view.Sub-research1aims at solving the definition, connotation and dimensions of quality credit concept. At first, we review and compare main thoughts, development, paradigms, methodologies, approaches, similarities and differences between credit and honesty theory in Western and ancient China and suggest that credit connects with contract and involves several participants, while honesty connects with only individual’s inner moral character and is irrelevant with others. As organizations, the essence of poor quality products is violation of contracts signed between each others. From such perspective, compared to ’quality honesty’, the statement of ’quality credit’ is of more theory rationality. Further, according to contract theory in economics, quality credit can be defined as ’the degree of compliance with quality contract’. After analyzing classic quality definitions made by quality management gurus, this paper chooses ’conformity’ and ’serviceability’ as quality dimensions. Considering the meanings involved, quality contract is then divided into three types: Quality Social Contract, Quality Economical Contract and Quality Psychological Contract. Quality credit can be divided into three forms accordingly:Quality Social Credit (QSCr), Quality Economical Credit (QECr) and Quality Psychological Credit (QPCr), which means the degree that an enterprise complies with social norms, such as laws and codes respectively; the degree that an enterprise complies with ordering contract with customers; the degree that an enterprise complies with psychological contracts with customers, respectively. Through literature reviewing, experts consulting and field interviewing,21reflecting indexes are chosen. Then Membership Analysis, Correlation Analysis, Discriminant Analysis, and Factor Analysis are applied to optimize indexes and8indexes3factors are extracted finally refine. Factor1contains ’conformance to norms and standards’ and ’safety of product’ and is named as QSCr. Factor2contains ’obey ordering contract’,’quality level’,’performance’and is named as QECr. Factor3contains’responding rapid’,’service attitude’’quality responsibility’ and is named as QPCr. EFA shows good structure character, and CFA shows good convergent and discriminant validity.Sub-research2aims at the issue of influencing factors of quality credit. Despite corporate credit researches have drawn a lot of factors through the establishment of various regression models, the starting point and nature of evaluation paradigm determines the one-sidedness of its conclusion. Literatures suggest that credit is mainly influenced by organizational moral characters and capabilities. Along with such argument, concept models and hypothesis between ethical climate, QMP and quality credit are established. Structural equation modeling (SEM) with236valid questionnaires is conduct and outcomes confirm the impact of organizational ethical climate and QMP on credit quality. For ethical climate, caring climate and rules climate positively influence three dimensions of quality credit; instrumental climate negatively influences QECr and QPCr; laws and codes climate positively influence QSCr and QECr. For QMP, customer orientation positively influence three dimensions of quality credit; management commitment, employee involvement, process management, supplier management and continuous improvement positively influence QECr and QPCr, but not appear a significant impact on QSCr. Besides, competition degree positively moderates all the significant relationships above.Sub-research3aims at verifying if organization ethics influences QMP. Empirical outcomes support that influcement dose exist, but specific relationships between different dimensions differ. Neither of four ethical climate types demonstrates a significant impact; caring and rules ethical climate positively influence customer orientation, employee involvement, process management, supplier management, continuous improvement:instrumental ethical climate negatively influence customer orientation and supplier management; while laws and codes ethical climate does not influence any dimension of quality credit.Combing subresearches with multilevel analysis, we conclude that QMP plays the partial mediating role on the relationship between ethical climate and quality credit. Such conlusion comforms with arguments in institutional theory that micro-events influce macro-events through institutions.This paper contributes to existing researches at the following aspects. Firstly, it discusses the theory meaning of quality credit, including the definition, connotation and dimensions and develops valid measurements. Secondly, as both ethical climate and QMP demonstrate significant influence on quality credit, it confirms the arguments of’organization moral character-credit’and’capability-credit’which have not been rigorous verified yet. Thirdly, this research broadens organization ethical climate as it finds out that ethical climate can also influence variables of organization’s operations management besides traditional variables of employee’s attitude or behavior. Lastly, this paper for the first time verifies that organization ethics has significant impact on QMP.