TQM practices and knowledge sharing: An empirical study of Malaysia’s manufacturing organizations

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to examine the multidimensionality of TQM practices and its relationship with knowledge sharing as perceived by middle management employees in Malaysia's ISO 9001:2000 certified firms of manufacturing sectors. The data which were collected from a survey of 129 middle management employees in Malaysia were used to test the proposed research framework. Furthermore, confirmatory factor analysis was performed to evaluate the reliability and validity of the measurement model, and the structural analysis was used to examine the research framework. The analytical results revealed that training and development, customer focus, and teamwork showed a positive association with middle management employees' knowledge sharing. This analysis is vital for senior managers of TQM companies that want to establish a knowledge sharing capability. Senior managers could focus their efforts on implementing TQM practices for building competitive knowledge sharing competencies.

Exploring the antecedents that influence middle management employees' knowledge-sharing intentions in the context of total quality management implementations

“…Employees' willingness to share their own past experiences and personal knowledge with colleagues enhance the intentions to execute TQM (Taiwo, 2001). Prior studies analysed the influence of some constructs on the intention to share knowledge, such as the roles of social influence, organisational culture, reward incentives, and supervisor management (Ooi et al, 2012). Furthermore, despite the proposal by Sulaiman and Burke (2009) that an individual's affiliation, worker empowerment, and knowledge technology motivate intentions to share knowledge, the number of studies that explored the influence of knowledge sharing on TQM implementations in the context of the IT industry is still limited.…”

“…More specifically, within organisations, engineers, accountants, departmental managers, assistant managers, project managers, executives, and supervisors were considered middle management employees (Ooi et al, 2012).…”

“…Thiagarajan and Zairi (1997) also noted that middle management employees account for the success of TQM and serve as important respondents in a survey of the organisational quality management domain. Only a few studies have been conducted on TQM, and a lack of systematic empirical evidence exists to reveal a significant relationship between employees' knowledge-sharing intention beliefs and their effects on TQM implementations, which can increase a firm's competitive advantages in the IT industry (Ooi, Cheah, Lin, & Teh, 2012). To the best of our knowledge, no research explicitly addressed middle management employees' determinants of knowledge-sharing intention as related to TQM implementation using the theory of reasoned action (TRA).…”

The early adulthood of the Asia Pacific Journal of Management: A literature review 2005–2014

“…Some articles increase their influence on the field when considering this accumulated impact (e.g., . Analyzing citation per year and early citation allows the identification of articles that have been recently published and show a high expected impact (e.g., Li et al, 2014a, b;Ooi, Cheah, Lin, & Teh, 2012;.…”

Supply chain collaboration and firm performance in Thai automotive and electronics industries

“…Practitioners in Southeast Asia are eager to gain a better understanding of how to participate in supply chains and how to reap benefits from SCCs. However, only a few studies have quantitatively investigated SCM and related practices in Southeast Asia, such as Malaysia (Chong and Ooi 2008;Ooi et al 2012) and Thailand (Banomyong and Supatn 2011).…”