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Focusing on the adoption of Total Quality Management (TQM) principles in universities, this research paper explores how the “soft” dimensions of TQM trigger its “hard” dimensions considering them at the individual (micro-) and the university (meso-), and eventually at cluster (system-), levels.

Adopting a qualitative approach, this study presents an in-depth, longitudinal case study of University of Siena, one of the oldest Italian universities, that has been at the core of the research-based cluster on vaccines, today converged in the Tuscan Life Science Cluster. In particular, data were collected between 2018 and February 2022 and consists of archival data (press articles, websites, books), nine interviews to key informants, multiyear experience of the Life Sciences sector by two of the authors and other material put at disposal by university offices, and emails. Data analysis relied on a timeline, a coding procedure that considered three levels of analysis (individual, organization and cluster). Finally, the authors looked at the “how” and “why” the emerged themes have contributed to academic excellence.

This paper unveils how “soft” and “hard” sides of TQM are blended across multiple levels for reaching academic excellence. The grounded model emerged enlightens the importance of an individual “soft” dimension, academic passion (composed by its three subdimensions of individual research, teaching and entrepreneurial passion) and also sheds light on the organizational “soft” and “hard” sides that the university has been able to design for encouraging research, teaching and third mission quality. Academic excellence has been possible thanks to the capitalization of the individual and organizational “soft” sides into real outcomes as represented by the organizational and individual “hard” sides.

The paper suggests the importance of TQM principles applied at universities' level, providing an in-depth description of “soft” and “hard” sides dimensions of TQM and their impact on all the three pillars of academic excellence. The study findings suggest implications for managers and professionals in the higher education domain as well as for policymakers emphasizing the importance of supporting the individual and organizational soft sides of TQM. The authors provide practical implications recommending universities to consider not only the organizational dimensions but also individual ones when pursuing higher education excellence. In particular, individual passion plays a crucial role and universities need to identify ways of nurturing it. The authors also recommend policymakers to think about new ways to sustain universities as crucial actors in boosting a cluster development, as well as to consider higher education institutions, especially in more rural areas, as a privileged player not only capable of nurturing academic excellence but also able of creating an internationally renowned cluster.

TQM principles have been intensively analysed from an industrial perspective focusing on manufacturing and services, while this paper focuses on TQM in universities, presenting a grounded model that blends the individual and organizational “soft” and “hard” sides.

This study seeks to investigate the effects of soft total quality management (TQM) on employees’ attitudes within a large Malaysian semiconductor organization. Despite extensive research on “soft” TQM practices, there has not been much research this area. Therefore, the proposed model was developed with the intention of examining this relationship.

Original research using self‐completed questionnaires, distributed to all staff within this organization, is thoroughly reported. The study sample consisted of 230 employees, resulting in a response rate of 76.6 percent. Data were analyzed by the latest version of SPSS, employing correlation and multiple regression analysis.

The results revealed that employees' perceptions of soft TQM significantly relate to employees’ attitudes with those perceiving a greater degree of awareness of soft TQM exhibiting more positive reactions towards job involvement, career satisfaction and organizational commitment. It is also found that, where teamwork was a dominant soft TQM practice, strong associations with employees’ attitudes existed. This analysis gives new insight into “soft” TQM concepts and, furthermore, the results of the multiple regression analysis confirmed that all variables were significantly related to perceptions of soft TQM practices and thus implementing TQM does pay off. The results also support the proposed model based on the empirically validated soft TQM instruments, which are reliable and valid.

The significance of this study would enable top management to strategize their goal alignments, which would eventually help promote mutual understanding between the management and employees and thus yielding significant results on employees’ attitudes. The conclusions, limitations and implications of the study are also extensively discussed.

Soft total quality management (TQM) aspects are the facets of TQM that mainly concern with the management of human resource in a way to achieve the results of employees' job satisfaction. Based on this approach, the objective of this research is to examine the relationship between the most popular five soft TQM aspects and employees' job satisfaction in “ISO 9001” certified Sudanese oil companies.

Data were collected through questionnaires from employees across a total of five Sudanese oil companies owned by the government, and adopting an ISO-9001 quality program. The total population of the study consists of 1,505 permanent employees, while the sample size was 253 employees, determined by adopting a stratified random sampling technique. The multiple regression model was adopted for data analysis.

The results showed that the construct of soft TQM aspects including “top management commitment”, “employee empowerment”, “teamwork”, “training and education” and “employee involvement” explain 74% in the variance of employees' job satisfaction. Results showed positive association between soft TQM aspects and employees' job satisfaction at the 5% significance level. It was also found that each individual variable of the five soft TQM aspects has a significant positive association with employees' job satisfaction. Meanwhile, the results indicated that the most important soft TQM aspect in explaining the variability of employees' job satisfaction was the “employee empowerment” with the highest correlation coefficient (β) of (0.189).

The study recommends that in order to achieve their primary goal of employees' satisfaction, HR practitioners within organizations adopting total quality programs should align their practice in such a way to enhance soft aspects of TQM. Policy makers and top management in order to gain long-term infrastructural benefits obtained from employees' job satisfaction should show a visible support to TQM programs and allocate necessary resources to train their staff in the quality management system that enhance their empowerment and involvement. The study also recommends that since soft aspects of TQM raise their job satisfaction, employees should support and conform to quality management systems within their organizations.

The paper focuses on soft TQM aspects’ practical implementation. The findings make a significant contribution by using ISO-certified governmental Sudanese oil companies and tested the hypothesized model entails the impact of soft TQM implementation and employees' job satisfaction.

The present research focuses on improving the awareness related to soft total quality management (TQM) practices by looking from the viewpoint of strategic human resources (HR). In addition, it is intended to reflect on the resulting soft TQM-HR outcomes and determine the mediating effect between soft TQM-HR strategies and organizational effectiveness (OE).

An exploratory research methodology with an online survey technique was adopted for the study. Three hundred and three managerial-level personnel from nine large Indian manufacturing organizations participated in the research. A theoretical model is projected and verified using correlation and mediation analysis.

The results show that commitment, reduced turnover intentions and satisfaction levels of employees mediate the relationship between resources, development and retention strategies and OE. However, the retention strategy has the strongest association with the OE of the three strategies. Also, of the three HR outcomes, satisfaction was strongly associated with OE. The analysis proved that the proposed model is an acceptable fit.

Implementing HR-related TQM strategies will likely impact OE since it elicits positive HR outcomes such as commitment, reduced turnover intention and satisfaction. Recognizing human resources as a unique strategic asset will help HR managers devise adequate resourcing, development and retention strategies instrumental in executing TQM.

The present micro study is unique in scrutinizing the influence of soft TQM-HR practices on organizational effectiveness by analysing the mediating effects of commitment, reduced turnover intention and satisfaction in Indian large-scale manufacturing organizations. The study is unique since no literature deciphers the linkages between HR strategies and organizational effectiveness in the Indian manufacturing sector.

The purpose of this paper is to address a perennial question regarding the importance of soft total quality management (TQM) as part of the TQM implementation process – a topic that has been significantly understudied. Specifically, the authors address previous calls in the literature for stressing the soft aspects of TQM and for drawing a critical success factor (CSF) list that is formulated on the basis of empirical research instead of theory.

This is a comparative qualitative case study of three manufacturing SMEs combining empirical data from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with a large variety of stakeholders – from top managers to shop-floor workers, site visits and observations.

The study identifies 12 soft CSFs, and while most of these factors have been well-documented in the literature (e.g. top management involvement and leadership), the authors show evidence for the existence of other soft constructs that have not been considered or have been given little importance previously (i.e. middle management involvement and support, reward and recognition, CSR focus).

The study fills two major gaps in the (T)QM literature. First, it enriches the understanding of TQM implementation among Japanese SMEs. Second, it addresses the importance of soft TQM as part of the TQM implementation process.

This paper provides company owners and managers with valuable knowledge that may assist their organisations in the pursuit of business excellence including higher product quality and employee satisfaction.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first (international) study to investigate TQM implementation within the context of Japanese SMEs.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of soft total quality management (TQM) on organizational performance in the Jordanian pharmaceutical manufacturing sector using the balanced scorecard (BSC) perspective. It also examines the indirect effect of soft TQM on financial performance through BSC non-financial perspectives.

The study is based on survey data collected from 197 employees in managerial and non-managerial positions working in Jordanian pharmaceutical manufacturing companies. Validity and reliability analyses were performed, and the study hypotheses were tested using structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that soft TQM positively affected all BSC perspectives. Customer perspective positively affected financial performance while innovation and learning perspective and internal business process perspective did not. In addition, only customer perspective significantly mediated the relationship between soft TQM and financial performance.

This is one of the first papers to examine the effect of soft TQM on organizational performance in terms of BSC perspective in the pharmaceutical sector. In addition, this paper is the first to examine the mediating effects of the BSC non-financial perspectives on the relationship between soft TQM and financial performance.

The present study conceptualizes total quality management (TQM) in terms of soft and hard aspects and examines their effects on quality performance and patient satisfaction. The indirect effects of soft and hard TQM on patient satisfaction through quality performance are also investigated.

A multi-item questionnaire was prepared to gather primary data from a sample of 312 medical employees in private hospitals in Jordan. The measurement model was evaluated for validity and reliability and determined to be acceptable. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to test the research hypotheses.

The results revealed that soft TQM has a strong positive effect on quality performance and patient satisfaction. Hard TQM was found to positively affect quality performance but to a lesser extent compared to soft TQM. The effect of hard TQM on patient satisfaction, meanwhile, was not significant. Quality performance positively mediated the relationship between TQM – both soft and hard – and patient satisfaction.

This study is one of the first to conceptualize TQM in terms of soft and hard aspects in a health care context. It offers valuable insights for managers of private hospitals looking to enhance quality performance and patient satisfaction. The results reveal that soft TQM is the primary driver of quality performance and patient satisfaction in the health care context, which is in stark contrast to the manufacturing sector.

This paper explores total quality management (TQM) soft domain efficacy in social care organizations to determine the extent to which an organization's project success may stem from soft TQM critical success factors (CSFs).

Non-structured interviews were conducted with 16 managers overseeing the prosthetic device regeneration project of the Italian local health unit (located in Salerno) to explore which soft factors could contribute to the success of a social care multifunctional organization.

Organizations' handling of certain projects, such as pivoting on soft TQM issues, may allow them to be configured as multiservice organizations. Therefore, a conceptual model of a multiservice social care organization is proposed.

From a managerial perspective, this study presents an interesting success case of a multiservice social care organization with a total annual expenditure of €20 million on prosthetic assistance. Preliminary data show a 13% reduction in public expenditure for Salerno's local health unit via a refurbishment project.

The paper contributes to the soft TQM literature debate: although Italian local health professionals appear aware of soft TQM issues' implementation and consciously apply them in their organization and projects, this occurs more with specific CSFs emerging from the literature. Therefore, this article paves the way for further quantitative and theoretical investigations on the adoption of TQM soft issues in social care organizations' performance measurement.

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.