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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of a corporate ethical policy, such as a code of ethics, on the unethical behavior of internal and vendor employees in the supply chain in India. It also aims to find whether International Standards Organization (ISO) certification of vendors affects the result and any significant relationship between management commitment and unethical behavior can be supported by the findings as well.

Empirical analyses were conducted on a survey consisting of 43 questions comprising 181 valid responses. Multiple regression analysis that includes four independent variables – code of ethics, management commitment, supply chain principles and personal values taking unethical behavior as dependent variable – was used to find the significance of the relationship.

The implementation of a code of ethics, management commitment, supply chain principles and personal values all have a negative association with unethical behavior. Personal values, measuring a firm’s financial aspects for non-compliance to ethical behavior, have a positive association with unethical behavior. The relationships of top management commitment, personal values with internal employees’ unethical behavior are significant. The significant relationship between management commitment and unethical behavior can be supported by the findings as well. It was also found that ISO certificates and firm size as the control variables did not have any effect on the relationship between the independent variables and unethical behavior. The analysis also shows that ISO 26000 certificate, the international standard for socially responsible operations, does not impact this relationship.

Measuring substantial managerial effort for corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices by asking questions like, “how committed employees think top management is to social responsibility,” may not fully measure substantial managerial effort for CSR practices. To improve the results of the current study, future research can use the CSR index or disclosure as a measure to better reflect management commitment and practice for social responsibility. Second, the current study is limited to measuring how many occurrences of unethical behavior are witnessed by employees instead of what specific unethical behavior is more often witnessed. Considering India has the second largest population in the world, 181 responses may not represent the true practices in the business environment in India for generalization.

The findings suggest that management should put more of an emphasis on improving the commitment of upper-level managers to decrease the overall unethical practices of their employees. The study finds that employees’ personal values influence their ethical behavior. Therefore, communications and training of employees at all levels should emphasis on improving personal values.

Businesses should influence academics to incorporate personal value building in course curricula. The Indian CSR law should incorporate the holistic view of CSR taking care of needs of all stakeholders under the provision of the regulation. In 2015, India became the first country in the world to legislate CSR practices in corporations but it misses the opportunity to sensitize the management and employees on ethical practices as it mainly identified philanthropic expenses as mandatory CSR spending and silent on ethical business practices.

The present study contributes to the literature by bringing supply chain context to the effect of different factors on unethical behaviors and interaction of internal and vendor firms in terms of ethical practices. There are several studies on business ethics in different countries including China, but in the case of India similar studies are not much. The present study fills the gap.

ISO 9000 certification serves as an entré into the global marketplace. European firms have been the most prolific in obtaining ISO 9000 certification. The certification experiences of 11 European firms are described. On‐site interviews and questionnaires were used to identify: the obstacles encountered during the implementation effort; the impacts certification had on operational factors; and the ISO 9000 elements requiring the greatest resources. Results suggest that firms of different sizes, in different industries, in different countries have similar experiences with respect to the obstacles, benefits, and effort associated with ISO 9000 certification. This information may facilitate certification by companies in countries seeking to penetrate international markets.

Important evaluation criteria as they are perceived by quality managers in American and US‐based Japanese firms are examined. For this study, three different groups of companies contained within four industries were considered. They included American firms using a traditional approach to manufacturing management, Japanese firms operating in the United States, and American firms attempting a Japanese approach to manufacturing management. This study identified price, on‐time delivery, and the supplier′s product quality as the three major criteria for evaluating vendors. The attitudes of quality managers concerning the importance of these variables were counter to the impressions portrayed in the academic and managerial press. Also differing from the literature was how much the managers in these different types of firms linked the evaluation criteria and overall organisational performance.

The benefits of Just‐in‐Time techniques are clearly explained with the acquired wisdom of the Japanese experience.

The implementation of the Japanese inventory control system, Kanban, in a production line, reduces Work‐in‐Process (WIP) inventory without affecting production or sales, though there is a point at which the reverse becomes true. The hypothesis that Kanban policy would reduce total WIP inventory without affecting production/sales at all was tested under two environmental conditions, cyclical demand and constant growth demand, by means of a simulated model, and also showed that under cyclical demand, frequent starts and stops in the line due to use of all the Kanban cards will produce eventual growth in all inventories, if not rectified. It is hoped that further research will develop a sufficently comprehensive model to facilitate the implementation of such a materials handling system.

Certain Japanese techniques have been introduced to American management; one of these is quality control circles (QCCs). The intent of this article is to address the managerial aspects of QCCs rather than to explore their internal operation. A goal programming (GP) model is proposed and run with a microcomputer‐based program. The purpose of this model is to evaluate the multiple goals of QCCs and the allocation of available resources for QCC members' activities. This model will assist management in measuring the effectiveness of QCCs in the organisation.

Many consider that Japanese manufacturing management techniques are among several factors which have contributed to Japan's superior quality and high growth rate of productivity. Just‐In‐Time (JIT) is one of the best known Japanese production management systems amongst management in the Western industrialised nations. In this paper the JIT manufacturing system and its key features are discussed. The important prerequisites and factors that are required for implementation of JIT in Western industrialised nations are then elaborated on. It is concluded that proper implementation of the JIT production system requires many changes in the organisation; yet successful implementation results in improved productivity and higher quality.

The results of personal observations of on‐site visits to ten manufacturing firms are presented. Several important differences between traditional American firms, non‐traditional American firms, and Japanese firms operating in the United States are noted with regard to quality management. Interviews with managers in these firms illustrate various degrees of concern for quality and its improvement. The most important findings are: (1) the Japanese and nontraditional American managers' commitment to quality and use of quality as a strategic tool to improve market shares, productivity and profit; (2) the use of pure financial measures to evaluate managers by the traditional American firms versus the Japanese and non‐traditional American firms which add quality performance to financial measure before evaluating employee performance.

To empirically investigate the relationships among critical TQM factors and business results.

Twenty‐three hypotheses regarding the relationships among TQM factors and business results have been developed through literature review and tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). The study utilized survey data obtained from US manufacturing companies.

Provides information about the results of each hypothesis, their implications, and how these findings compare to previous studies. Pays special attention to the relationships between TQM factors and business results and discusses findings in this area by offering insights from 22 previous studies that analyzed TQM‐performance relationships.

Researchers could use the results of this study to explore various related hypotheses in more detail and improve the accuracy of future empirical quality management studies. The study makes specific recommendations for such future studies. There were also some research limitations. For instance, the data were obtained through mail survey and relied on the perceptions of the respondents.

The results of this study can be used by managers to prioritize the implementation of TQM practices. For instance, those practices that are found to have a positive impact on business results can be recommended to managers so that they can allocate resources to improve these practices to get the best results.

This study conducts a comprehensive review of the literature to develop factors of critical TQM practices and business results, and unlike most previous studies, it uses multiple, distinct indicators for each factor to test an elaborate SEM model of the relationships among these factors.

There has been a plethora of published research related to total quality management (TQM) in the last few decades. However, very few studies focused on cataloging critical factors of TQM. One of the objectives of this literature review was to investigate the state of TQM by examining and listing various TQM factors identified based on survey studies conducted in different countries and published in a variety of journals over the past decade. An examination of 76 survey studies that used an integrated approach to TQM showed that the TQM factors could be grouped under 25 categories. An analysis of the 347 survey based research articles published between 1989 and 2000 using these 25 factors as a framework revealed the most frequently covered TQM factors in the literature. Another goal of the paper was to analyse the objectives of these articles by year and type of journal they were published in to determine the trends in TQM survey based studies and recommend future direction for research. The analysis showed that the objectives of the 347 studies could be grouped under six categories.