Contribution à une théorie de la gestion de la qualité totale: les déterminants de l'efficacité

In this article, we apply the organizational architecture theory to the total quality management (TQM) to understand the complexity and the mechanisms of its working and its efficiency. We show that the role played by TQM in the value creating requires a profound analysis of the profits and the costs, which it induces, and the setting of a coherent organizational architecture. An empirical test has been realized on a sample of 171 French firms using the canonical correlation method as well as the bootstrap method. This test allowed a validation of the three tested hypotheses.