Quality management and performance: An annotated review

Abstract

Within the operations management literature, quality management (QM) has been one of the most popular research areas over the last two decades. QM is an integrative management philosophy aimed at the continuous improvement of performance. Consequently, the impact of QM practices on firm performance has been the subject of constant interest and challenge among researchers. Numerous empirical studies have attempted to investigate QM practice–performance relationships in different contexts. Based on an extensive review of the literature, this paper attempts to reflect the research stream on the impact of QM on firm performance and to provide insights for future research. For this purpose, the reviewed QM literature is organised and classified along three main themes: QM practices, performance and QM–performance relationships.

Keywords:

• quality management
• QM practices
• performance