The impact of management leadership on quality performance throughout a supply chain: an empirical study

Abstract

Today, quality has become the essence of competitive advantage for all enterprises. As competition moves beyond a single firm into the supply chain, the focus is shifted from the management of internal quality practices alone to integrating these practices with those of external supply chain partners. All quality management models strongly emphasise the importance of leadership in a company’s top management to success in quality improvement and business excellence. Modern leadership theories have focused on transformational and transactional types of leadership. The literature suggests that the leadership capability in the form of the transformational style is the key determinant to success in all quality management practices and business excellence models. This empirical study investigates the influence of managers’ transformational leadership (TL) style on a firm’s quality performance from a supply chain perspective. An online survey of quality-related managers of enterprises operating in Turkey is conducted to measure the TL characteristics of managers and their impact on firms’ quality performance. A proposed research model and hypothesis are tested by using a Structural Equation Model. The results show that the level of the TL style of managers has a significant and positive impact on a firm’s supply chain quality performance.

Keywords:

• leadership
• structural equation modelling
• supply chain quality management
• total quality management
• transformational leadership