The Impact Of "Soft" And "Hard" TQM Elements On Innovative Performance

In the past few years, many world-class companies had achieved remarkable success by using the Total Quality Management approach. Communities of experts and scholars have recognized the importance of TQM.After a long-term development, TQM gradually formed a systematic framework. With the emergence of varieties of quality award models, China introduced the quality management methods from 1960s and established our own quality award to vigorously implement quality management model. With the development trend of the times, the competition among the enterprises will be unusually fierce and innovation has become mainstream. Many Companies are competing to promote the innovation process to obtain the sustainable competitive advantage, then, the relationship between TQM and innovation began to receive more attention.Whether there is a suppression role of TQM in promoting quality management has always been a hot issue. Although a large number of domestic and foreign scholars have analyzed the relationship between TQM and innovation, there was no conclusive result. Based on the existing literature, this study use the domestic enterprises as the samples of empirical research, exploring impact process of TQM on innovative performance from the innovative capability perspective.Firstly, we recall the relative research literatures of Total quality management, innovative capability, and innovative performance. Secondly, we bring the innovation capability as the intermediate variables into the relationship model between TQM and innovation performance to investigate the existence of an intermediary role and the direct and indirect effects of TQM on innovation performance. Thirdly, we collect 75 valid questionnaires for the pre-analysis conducted by the SPSS software to improve the initial questionnaire. Finally, we finish the statistical analysis of with SPSS and AMOS software to test the proposed model.The conclusions are as follows:Firstly, both soft and hard TQM have significant impact on innovative performance, but the influence of information analysis was not significant, so role of information system in the process of implementation of total quality management is limited. Secondly, the two different ways of TQM have significant impact on innovative capability. Finally, the result is consistent with the initial hypothesis that innovative capability plays a significant intermediary role between the TQM and innovation performance. Therefore, the impact mechanism of TQM to innovative performance can be divided into direct and indirect effects.