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The purpose of this paper is to analyse the importance of specific, quality-related employees’ attributes to the enhancement of product quality in food companies. The main goal is to examine the synergistic relationships between specific employees’ attributes, which have been related in literature to ISO 9000 successful implementation, to continuous improvement, operational performance and product quality.

The analysis includes an initial exploratory factor analysis, followed by confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling, in order to investigate the relations between the constructs of the proposed model.

The findings reveal that although the examined quality-related “employees’ attributes” do not directly contribute to “product quality”, they influence both “continuous improvement” and “operational performance” of food firms. The results also confirm the impact of both “continuous improvement” and “operational performance” on “product quality” and also that “continuous improvement” helps explain “operational performance”.

The domain in which the model has been validated, the restricted use of moderators in the model and lack of empirical validation of the model in non-food sector companies, based on various respondents from each company, are a number of limitations associated with this study which suggest future research proposals.

The findings of this study can motivate managers of food companies to focus on certain quality-related employees’ attributes in order to boost continuous improvement of ISO 9001 systems and operational performance of their companies, leading to product quality enhancement.

This study finds particular relevance in emphasizing that although specific quality-related employees’ attributes, as these are detected in literature, have a significant contribution towards continuous improvement and operational performance, they are not the only critical factor leading to product quality. More complex relationships need to be considered by integrating other constructs as major antecedents of food product quality.

Continuous improvement has become an important strategy in improving organizational performance. Unfortunately, product development is often excluded in continuous improvement programs due to the special characteristics of product development activities. The overall purpose of this paper is to contribute to a better understanding of continuous improvement in the context of product development.

A central aspect in this context is that many organizations find it difficult to improve and learn if work is carried out in the form of projects. In this paper, a quality perspective on continuous improvement is introduced and its usefulness is tested empirically through three case studies in Swedish organizations. The focus is on the improvement programs used and the quality principles displayed in a product development context.

The results show that the three investigated organizations have multiple improvement programs, but that some configurations of improvement programs seem to be more successful than others. For instance, co‐ordination of multiple improvement programs, scope creep, and separating between product development processes and project management models are important success factors for continuous improvement. In addition, an introduction of an improvement program without adoption of a critical mass of quality principles is doomed to fail.

The research initiative is one of the first to conduct an empirical investigation of how organizations design and work with improvement programs in the context of product development. It provides knowledge to both academics and practitioners on how organizations can design and implement initiatives on quality management, especially in the context of product development.

Although prior research has found that employee participation is key to successfully implementing quality management initiatives (Baird et al., 2011; de Menezes, 2012; Lagrosen and Lagrosen, 2005), little research in operations management exists that investigates which management actions and behaviors lead to employee commitment to such initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap in the operations management literature by investigating which influence tactics are the most effective in soliciting employee commitment to continuous improvement tasks. The paper also examines how influence tactics affect the supervisor-subordinate relationship and the manager’s effectiveness in implementing continuous improvement initiatives.

A survey instrument was used to measure supervisor-subordinate relationship quality, usage of influence behaviors and participants’ task commitment to continuous improvement initiatives.

The results indicate that five of the 11 influence tactics identified in the prior literature, i.e., collaboration, consultation, ingratiation, inspirational appeals, and rational persuasion, are significant and strong predictors of employee commitment to continuous improvement initiatives. Further, analyses show that these influence tactics are significant drivers of the quality of the supervisor-subordinate relationship, which was found to partially mediate the relationship between influence tactics and the supervisor’s effectiveness in implementing continuous improvement projects.

Since the extant CI and Total Quality Management literature has looked at the plant or program level rather than the worker-level as in the research, the findings offer one explanation as to why earlier studies investigating the relationship between quality management programs and increased organizational performance reported mixed results.

Increasing managers’ awareness and usage of influence tactics may increase the success rate of continuous improvement projects as well the quality of the relationship with the manager’s subordinates.

While the extant literature has argued that management support and employee commitment are key components of a continuous improvement project implementation, little has been written about the specific management actions and behaviors that lead to success.

Corporate culture plays a key role in the adoption and maintenance of a continuous improvement environment. Yet the role that culture does play and its nature tend to be overlooked or simplified so as to be almost meaningless. Overviews aspects of corporate culture and uses a case study of a professional company to show how they went about developing a continuous improvement environment. The key lessons from the case study include the need for “ownership” of jobs, self‐esteem as a driving force for continuous improvement, importance of activities related to customers, achievement requiring teamwork, function replaced by process and understanding through involvement in quality improvement programmes.

The purpose of this paper is to compare a range of quality and continuous improvement strategies and to investigate whether there is a best choice of strategy for use within the medical devices sector.

A brief literature‐based review of a number of continuous improvement strategies. Comparison of these strategies and a subsequent discussion of the rationale that guides the choice of strategy based on the prevailing conditions. An overview of this process in the context of the medical devices sector is provided.

Quality and continuous improvement strategies can be differentiated in terms of their cultural or process focus. Moreover, the favoured leadership style of an organisation may play a part in determining which strategies are likely to be most appropriate. From the medical device and healthcare product perspective, regulatory and purchasing considerations will have a role in determining the strategy adopted.

For managers seeking to implement a strategy for continuous improvement, a review of organisational leadership styles may help the decision–making process. For the medical devices sector, in particular, the need to align the strategy adopted with regulatory requirements is perhaps self‐evident. However, only by a detailed understanding of the issues involved in continuous improvement, can all of the attendant benefits be gained.

The paper proposes a link between a given organisation's favoured leadership style and the applicability of a particular continuous improvement strategy. The implications for the medical device and healthcare technologies sector are specifically addressed.

The objective of the study is to examine the extent to which pharmaceutical companies in India rely on traditional planning approaches rather than the new learning approach to strategic planning. In addition to that, the study also seeks to examine the perceived ability of the pharmaceutical companies in India to integrate continuous improvement goals and product quality into the overall strategic planning and success in implementing total quality management (TQM) programs examined through three particular continuous improvement mindsets.

The study collected data from select pharmaceutical companies in India through survey technique using a standardized questionnaire through online mode. A descriptive statistical analysis is performed to examine the extent of integration of strategic planning and continuous improvement in the select pharmaceutical companies in India.

The results of the study indicate that pharmaceutical companies in India still rely greatly on traditional planning methods for strategic planning. However, a shift is also observed toward adoption of best practice management and modern strategic management techniques. The study also demonstrates that continuous improvement goals and strategies are included into the corporate strategic planning.

The study employs only descriptive statistics, and no hypotheses are generated in the study because the objective is not to generalize the findings. The process of formulating quality goals and integrating them with strategy is typical to any company. Therefore, the findings cannot be generalized. The findings of the study do not given any insights into the strategic quality management process due to online mode of data collection. Also, the focus on the study is on the internal management of quality in an organization and factors in the external environment or in the value chain outside the firm, influencing strategic management of quality are beyond the scope of present study.

Considering the significance of quality of products, an understanding of the link between quality and strategic goals helps the managers in pharmaceutical industry to align the strategic planning goals with quality goals ensuring that the entire organization moves in same strategic direction.

The strong focus quality in pharmaceutical industry in India has given impetus to development of well-managed quality programs on the shop-floor to remain competitive and survive in the highly competitive global markets. However, no such study is conducted so far to understand the extent to which continuous improvement or TQM practices are integrated into strategic planning in the pharmaceutical companies in India.

Total quality management (TQM) is a part of the total quality assurance perspective. This system, which is considered as a type of managerial philosophy, employs all organizational levels to constantly ameliorate the quality of goods and service. The purpose of this paper is to measure the effect of hard and soft TQM factors on the behavior of customers based on the role of innovation and continuous improvement.

The research model was extracted from TQM variables in hard and soft parts, customer behavior, innovation and continuous improvement by reviewing the literature and research background. Based on this, a questionnaire was prepared and then, distributed among the statistical population including 374 project managers, quality assurance managers as well as quality control managers by using simple random sampling. All sub-criteria of questionnaire were determined using Delphi technique, to test the research model. Having gathered the questionnaire, the hypotheses were analyzed by using structural equation modeling and AMOS software.

According to the statistical analyses, TQM has a significant effect on customer behavior through continuous improvement of the quality and innovation. Also, regarding the obtained results, the highest effect was related to the effect of hard TQM factors on customer behavior through innovation as 0.62. Furtheremore, TQM soft factors such as human resource management have significant effect on customer behavior through quality improvement and innovation. Moreover, TQM hard factors are effective on customer behavior through quality improvement and innovation.

The questionnaire was designed and distributed in order to evaluate the hypotheses in this study. One of the primary rationales behind utilizing this method instead of other methods such as interview was high geographical distribution of organizations. Using other moderator variables such as knowledge management, customer knowledge management and customer emotions can be conducted in the future in this area.

Changing the organizational relationships from task orientation to the process orientation, and controlling the organizational performance by measuring process innovations and improvements, while paying attention to the customer satisfaction system are suggested in this paper. These implications should be implemented in construction projects by department of project management office. Furtheremore, providing different communication for receiving the opinions of the customer and imposing them in the product and service, paying attention to the response system and customer complaint, implementation of this process in the organization, and having a process approach for presenting and developing services are the main subjects in this regard.

Unlike previous studies on this subject, a structural equation model is used for assessing unobservable latent constructs and their related interrelationship in measuring the impact of TQM factors. Focusing on customer behavior which is a broader domain than customer satisfation through continuous improvement of the quality and innovation is another value of this research.

The firm’s structural inertia seems to be a crucial roadblock in continuous improvement efforts. The management paradigm shift required in the transition towards a continuous improvement culture is from individual‐based learning to system‐based learning. Explores the role of an organizational learning mechanism in overcoming the barriers for continuous improvement. Examines the implications of the creation of a parallel learning structure mechanism and its concomitant impact on continuous improvement in a paper mill firm over an eight‐year period. Concludes with the identification and discussion of some theoretical issues.

This study aims to examine empirically how business in Taiwan has successfully implemented and benefited from ISO 9000.

Of 1,668 survey questionnaires mailed to companies with ISO 9000 certification, a total of 441 usable responses were used in the survey. Using the structural equation model, this study is grounded in a theoretical framework that links five key variables: top management support, quality planning, employee involvement, continuous improvement and firm performance.

The empirical results indicate that there is a positive relation between ISO 9000 and business performance. Keys to success include four constructs, namely top management support, quality planning, employee involvement and continuous improvement. These constructs are a series of chain, rather than parallel components.

This study constructs a conceptual framework that links the following key variables: top management support, quality planning, employee involvement, continuous improvement and firm performance. This study not only assesses the impact of these practices on firm performance, but also clarifies the process through which ISO 9000 implementation effects performance. Moreover, it provides an empirical framework for testing the well‐known PDCA cycle. The results should provide valuable information for dealing with similar managerial issues.

The purpose of this study is to explore the use of the performance measurement system as an organizational learning mechanism to support continuous improvement.

The paper reports the results of a survey of Australian organizations certified to quality standard ISO 9000.

For those respondents who consider their organization's quality program to be successful, the findings indicate that such organizations have embedded quality into the culture of the organization, and have developed performance measurement systems as an organizational learning mechanism to support the continuous improvement initiatives.

The paper highlights the need for management to ensure that the organization's management control systems are structured to support continuous improvement initiatives.

The paper explores the links between continuous improvement and organizational learning.