The effect of organizational culture stemming from national culture towards quality management deployment

Purpose – As a multinational corporation (MNC) implements a new innovation campaign at its worldwide operations, varying degrees of success stories are reported. The extent of how an innovation campaign and methodology can be transferred from its corporate office to its overseas operations has been the subject of considerable debate. Implementing an innovation methodology such as the total quality management (TQM) can be challenged by the organizational culture unique to each operation. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between organizational culture stemming from national culture and TQM implementation performance. Design/methodology/approach – In total, 186 managers of MNCs are surveyed in their cultural orientations and TQM implementation experiences. The survey result is analyzed by regressing cultural elements on TQM elements. Findings – Our result suggests that an organization's TQM practices are significantly influenced by the organization culture. However, each dimension of organization culture is related to TQM in different fashions. For instance, power distance influences all the TQM elements, but masculinity has positive impact on business performance of TQM practice only. Research limitation/implications – Our findings may assist MNCs in explaining varying success stories of quality management implementation efforts. Furthermore, MNCs can focus their efforts towards improving certain organizational culture that is more significantly related to a certain quality management element. Originality/value – No previous research has reported on how organizational culture stemming from national culture affects quality management methodology implementation.