Investigation of TQM implementation: empirical study in Brazilian ISO 9001-registered SMEs

Abstract

This paper presents an investigation of TQM implementation in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) ISO 9001:2008 registered Brazilian companies. The applied research method was a survey with 200 firms, and the structural equation modelling technique applied to analyse the empirical data. The results reveal significant issues about the context considered. The findings point out that ISO 9001:2008 practices may not necessarily drive performance improvements, i.e. the Brazilian SMEs are not moving towards TQM because of the lack of awareness of TQM and commitment to continuous improvement philosophy. The companies appear to be more concerned with TQM practice implementation, which guarantees the ISO certificate than with quality improvement, which leads to a better performance. Finally, the results of the study have come into question if the TQM model is robust enough to be implemented on SMEs. The search of an answer to this question requires more investigation by scholars.

Keywords:

• total quality management
• ISO 9001
• SME
• structural equation modelling

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Brazilian governmental agencies of CAPES, CNPq, and FAPEMIG.