An Exploratory Study of Total Quality Management Practices in Service Industries

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an approach for continuously improving the quality of goods and services delivered through the participation at all levels and function of the organization. TQM also requires continuous improvement not only in products or services but also at all operational and managerial levels for creating wide quality culture. It affirms an integrated management approach based on a set of techniques to achieve this objective. But organizations find it difficult to implement these techniques in a satisfactory and efficient way. This makes a general opinion among the managers of the organization that TQM may not work in many cases and TQM initiatives declared failed. Therefore, there is an immediate need to focus on which management practices support “service quality” so that implementation of TQM can be made effectively and smoothly. The purpose of this paper is to identify those management practices that support service quality and are most critical for the management of quality to different types of service industries. To achieve this objective, an extensive literature review was carried out to understand the range of managerial practices which supports service quality in the service sector. The study identifies 17 major TQM practices which support service quality in service industries. The findings are reported in the conclusions