Integrating organizational factors, quality management and knowledge management to organizational performance in Malaysia manufacturing companies: The mediating role of innovation

• Main Author: Julian Paul Sidin
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: HD58.7-58.95 Organizational behavior, change and effectiveness. Corporate culture
• Online Access: https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/11307/1/ph000000065.pdf; https://eprints.ums.edu.my/id/eprint/11307/

The study focused on the relationship between organizational factors, quality management and knowledge management, and organizational performance in Malaysia's manufacturing companies. This conceptualization of organizational factors, quality management and knowledge management demonstrate four important issues investigated in this study. The first issue focuses on the relationship between organizational factors and organizational performance. The second issue stresses the relationship between quality management and organizational performance. The third issue addresses the relationship between knowledge management and organizational performance. Lastly, the fourth issue concerns with the role of innovation on mediating the relationship of organizational factors, quality management and knowledge management on organizational performance. A questionnaire survey was developed as a research instrument and distributed to manufacturing companies in Malaysia selected from the list of the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers (FMM) Industries Directory 2003. A total of 600 survey questionnaires were distributed and 233 survey questionnaires were received, representing a response rate of 38.8 percent. However, only 201 questionnaires were usable for data analysis. The findings of this research support a positive relationship between the aforesaid researches constructs and organizational performance. This study also found that innovation mediated most of the relationship between the research constructs and organizational performance. The findings were based solely on organizations from Malaysia and may not reflect in other geographic, economic or cultural settings. The contributions of this study are significant in terms of theoretical and managerial perspectives. Firstly, in terms of theoretical implications, the findings of the study provide empirical evidence supporting the relationship between organizational factors, quality management and knowledge management, and organizational performance. Given the importance of innovation in providing the mediating effect on these relationships, some set of results in this study seems to influence the others and some do not. Secondly, in terms of managerial implications, evidence from this study signals the importance of developing an environment or culture of support to further enhance the performance outcomes of quality management and knowledge management implementation.