Purpose – 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. Design/methodology/approach – A survey instrument was used to measure supervisor-subordinate relationship quality, usage of influence behaviors and participants’ task commitment to continuous improvement initiatives. Findings – 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. Research limitations/implications – 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. Practical implications – 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. Originality/value – 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.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to try to establish a relationship between organizational learning capability (OLC) and TQM culture (TC) based on a case study of a leading vocational education institution of Hong Kong, and to develop an organizational learning transformation model for vocational education in the context of TQM culture.Design/methodology/approachThe linkage between OLC and TC constructs is established and confirmed statistically by a structured questionnaire survey. Key TC constructs are then identified and prioritized using analytic hierarchy process (AHP) based interview, focus group, and ethnographic study to formulate an empirical TQM culture based OL transformation model for vocational education. Finally, the validity and effectiveness of the model is verified through an actual implementation case.FindingsStrong positive correlation is found between the OLC and TC constructs, while shared vision, long‐term focus, and teacher involvement are identified to be the key TC constructs that can have significant impact on OLC in vocational education. It also confirms that rules orientation prohibits the creation of TQM culture, while innovative leadership does nurture its formation. An empirical TQM culture based OL transformation model for vocational education is formulated and subsequently tested through an implementation case. The result confirms that the model can effectively facilitate a transition of a traditional vocational education institution towards a learning organization for organizational excellence.Originality/valueAlthough the evolutionary development and theory supports for TQM and Organizational Learning (OL) are distinct, they appear to have more in common than they have in distinctiveness. However, there is little synergy developed between these two fields so far both in academia and industry. The paper establishes a theoretically informed and statistically confirmed organizational learning transformation model for vocational education in the context of TQM culture.

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