Total quality management, knowledge management and corporate culture : how do they synchronized for performance excellence

The emergence of knowledge economy and globalization has pushed the businesses into a new paradigm. The concept of organizational performance excellence solely based on total quality management (TQM) philosophy is no longer valid in international businesses and needs to be improved. The ever increasing global competition is forcing organizations for cost reduction on one hand and enhanced quality on the other. This dilemma faced by the organizations is difficult to solve. It is argued that mixed practices based on the philosophies of TQM and knowledge management (KM) and their synchronization is necessary to achieve performance excellence in organizations. The current research endeavored to determine the common grounds between TQM and KM philosophies for their synchronization. The review of literature identifies one common enabler for TQM and KM namely Corporate Culture with respect to performance excellence, using this common enabler a theoretical framework is proposed that can be used by organizations to obtain the benefits of both philosophies. The validation of the proposed framework was conducted by obtaining data from manufacturing sector. The managers from manufacturing concerns were interviewed in detail using structured questionnaire. Delphi method is adopted to develop consensus between the participants. The results showed that different cultures have put distinct impacts in the manufacturing sector. However, results also showed that with the help of knowledge management philosophy cost can be cut down in dominant developmental or rational culture while leading group culture improves the quality in TQM philosophy. Finally it is concluded that TQM and KM philosophies can be implemented in synchronization and their combined implementation will lead to higher performance excellence.