Total quality management-innovation: a meta-analysis approach

So far, the relationship between total quality management and innovation has been subjected to several studies. The diverse findings of these studies and the need to acquire further insights into generalised TQM practices and innovation relationships necessitate a meta-analytical study to correct and combine the results across variety of researches. To examine the link more closely, the relationship between individual TQM practices and various innovation measurements is hypothesised. In addition, the existence of moderating variables in the relationship is also considered. Numerical investigation was done, by implementing the meta-analysis of correlations approach on 25 studies to describe the distribution of the actual correlation between the independent and dependent variables (leadership, customer focus, people management, process management, information and analysis, supplier management, process innovation and product innovation), and the presence of moderators. Our results show that a considerable amount of variance in innovation can be accounted for by TQM and the most of the examined relationships were influenced by moderators.