Quality management and administrative innovation as firms' capacity to adapt to their environment

Abstract

This paper proposes to revise and develop new arguments in favour of the benefits of implementing quality management (QM) programmes for organizational innovation, more specifically, for administrative innovation. To achieve our purpose, we first show that quality and innovation perform a fundamental role as combined alternatives in the management of firms. Second, we analyse the factors that determine the administrative innovation gap and the repercussions of QM implementation for these relationships and for the capacity to adapt to the environment through innovation. The sample of firms was randomly selected from the Duns and Bradstreet database, which includes the 50,000 largest companies operating in Spain. To verify the different hypotheses in the model, we used structural equations modelling. The results show that the factors determining the process of innovation have repercussions for firms' capacity to adapt to their environment. They also show that a QM context facilitates this adaptation. This paper verifies that, while innovation and QM alone do not possess the qualities required to provide organizations with sustainable competitive advantages, the bundle of innovation and QM together with other resources and competences allow organizations to obtain a competitive advantage and adapt to their environment.

Keywords:

• quality management
• administrative innovation
• proactivity
• environment
• fit
• climate of innovation

Acknowledgements

This work has been developed with funding and collaboration Ministry of Science and Innovation and the European Union [R&D Project ECO2010-15885].