Study On The Relationship Between Quality Management Practice And Firm Performance In Chinese Manufacturing Industry

With manufacturing firms greatly impacted by the global financial crisis,quality isattracting evergrowing attention as the core competitiveness for the firms' survival and development.Quality management practices are deployed extensively in various firms all over the world.However,the implementation of quality management practices didn't always improve the firm's performance effectively under the complicate and changeable market environment.Therefore,how the quality management practices affect the firm performance of Chinese manufacturing industry?What is the most important quality management practice factor in the implementation of quality management?Which contingency factor affects the quality management implementation in China?These are the important problems that confused the researchers and manufacturing firms' managers.Current literature shows that the relationship between quality management practice and organizational performance is still controversial,and contingency research about quality management practices is limited in China.Under this condition,based on the characteristics of manufacturing firms in China,a theoretical model for relationships of quality management practice and firm performance is proposed in this research.The validation of the model is proved by using 228 survey data through structural equation model(SEM).The contingency theory is also applied to explore the impact of quality management practices on firm performance.The main contributions of the dissertation are:Firstly,the dissertation extends the previous empirical research on quality management and a 10-dimension model about the relationships of quality management practices and firm performance is constructed.By adding the role of quality management department which is essential in quality management implementation in China,the model provides a new theoretical basis for researcher in this field and a reference for firm managers in quality management implementation.Secondly,the positive relationship between quality management practices and firm performance is confirmed by using the survey data of Chinese manufacturing firms.And the critical impact of role of quality management department in China is validated,showing that there is an important link between top management and the functional departments in quality management implementation.The specific paths of Chinese manufacturing firms of quality management are explored in the dissertation.Finally,the significant differences between the relationship of quality management practices and firm performance are found under three contingency factors,including size of firm,industry type and environmental uncertainty.These contingencies also moderate the influence of total effects of quality management practices,such as role of quality management department,human resource,and customer relationship on firm performance.And the key quality management practices of effecting firm performance under different contingency conditions are identified by total effects analysis in groups.This dissertation provides a new indication for Chinese contingency research on quality management.