Impact of TQM and Technology Management on Organizational Performance

In the growing business competitiveness TQM (Total Quality Management) and TM (Technology Management) practices have become important for organizational success. TQM fosters business excellence while TM helps to deal with process and product related technological challenges. However, in literature TM has received little consideration with TQM. This paper is a research study that attempts to identify any combined relationship of both concepts with OP (Organizational Performance) while taking into account different organizational contextual factors including ISO-9001 certification. Responses from 86 different organizations in Pakistan are collected through questionnaire survey and random sampling. Statistical analysis shows that OP is positively associated to TQM and TM. Results of this study indicate the significance of ISO-9001 certification for TQM but do not support it for OP. It is also observed that organizations of private sector are significantly better in TQM and TM practices, so in OP, in comparison to government or public sector organizations. The study contributes to explore and augment both practices for implementation to improve OP.

capability can be enhanced with TQM philosophy and strategies or techniques [3]. Among which TQM has been considered as one of the best business strategy. TQM aims to raise customer satisfaction by delivering quality products and services and to increase productivity by lowering costs [4]. Various studies provide key elements and factors of TQM. The most common elements of TQM are; top management commitment, process approach, customer focus, employee involvement, quality information and continuous improvement [5]. Business excellence frameworks are considered as TQM models and establish elements of leadership, strategic planning, process management, customer focus, workforce focus practices and information management.
Today the global competition has impacted the pace of organizational strategies and operations, so in attaining long term OP the organizations are needful to cope with technology challenges [6]. Literature suggests TQM is less concerned with technology and is considered as barely administrative or managerial function [7]. In fact, various studies have been carried out to observe any relationship or association of TQM practices and performance measures [8]. These include identification of success factors for TQM program, examination of barriers or obstacles in the implementation of TQM in an organization and determination of the impact of TQM on variety of performance factors [2]. But there is little in the literature that investigates the combined effect of TQM and TM on the performance. Rapidly changing markets constantly challenge for technological and innovative products in shorter development lifecycles [9]. Therefore, TM has become vital in the dimensions of product and process advancement. The study on the integration of TQM and TM becomes important in linkage to firm's performance [10].
This paper is a research study of the relationship of TQM, TM and OP. A research survey is conducted and questionnaire is administered to different fields of industries and sectors in Pakistan. The study also determines the effects of different organizational contextual factors and ISO 9001 certification on the OP.
Previously a study has suggested that the nature of the customer base, size of firm and the ISO-9000 implementation are associated with perceived TQM and organizational success [11]. Results through statistical analysis show that TQM and TM practices positively associate OP. ISO-9001 certification found significantly important in case of TQM implementation however, results in this study did not support its significance for OP, as was also observed in the work by Aarts and Vos [12].

Total Quality Management
Quality management has been extended to a specialized field, as TQM, which covers both philosophical and applied aspects of quality. TQM has been defined in many ways. It has been defined as "a system approach to management that aims to enhance value to customers by designing and continually improving organizational processes and systems" [13]. It has been also said that "TQM seeks continuous improvement in the quality of all processes, people, products, and services of an organization". [14]. TQM is one such philosophy which can help organizations to achieve, maintain and improve customer satisfaction [15]. TQM encourages culture of employee involvement that aims for high quality and customer satisfaction to achieve long-term success to give benefit to all stakeholders.
TQM represents three main aspects; one is the meeting or exceeding customer satisfaction, the second is the continuous improvement of quality and the third training and involvement of all employees [16]. Continuous improvement, breakthrough and standardization using TQM play a key role as impact procedure to increase competitiveness [17]. TQM as a CQI approach leads to organizational growth and competitiveness [18].

Technology Management
"Technology refers to the theoretical and practical knowledge, skills, and artifacts that can be used to develop products and services as well as their production and delivery systems" [26]. Adopting and applying new technologies indicates that there are wider issues that have to be considered and needed to recognize and address in order to circumvent the problems or challenges [27]. TM has been widely defined as "a process, which includes planning, directing, control and coordination of the development and implementation of technological capabilities to shape and accomplish the strategic and operational objectives of an organization" [28].
The strategic and organizational factors which make the organization more competitive in improving its performance can be successful implementation of TM [29]. Technology can be an organization's core competence in the form of product or process [30,31].
From literature two aspects of TM become important that are product technology and process technology [32,33]. As to develop and build technologically advanced products the organizations have to opt for sophisticated and advanced processes and operations.
In same way the organizations with high-tech machines and processes are capable to produce superior products or design services with advanced features. The distinctive difference between process and product technology is that, process technologies are used to build and deliver products to customers, whereas, a product technology is the technological features embedded within the product [34].
There is increased use of interchangeable fashion of TM and innovation management is observed. Both concepts are becoming intertwined as practices [35]. Kim and Hwang [36] deliberated two types of technological innovationproduct and process. Product innovation is the capability to create new products or to upgrade existing products to achieve customer satisfaction or to attain competitive advantage. High performance organizations always strive to grasp new opportunities and make products of high quality in short product development time to meet the needs of the customers. Process innovation is referred as the capability to deploy efficient methods that create value in the supply chain from arrangement of raw materials to delivery of products. High performance organizations tend to acquire, enhance and utilize new knowledge and skills efficiently in operations to gain success. Becker and Egger [37] ascertained the influence of both modes of innovation to raise a firm's propensity to export.

IT (Information Technology) is another dimension of
technology which has gained its importance in OP. Nair [38] affirmed the influence of IT on financial and nonfinancial performance of the organization. However, the current study takes only 2D (Two Dimensions) of technology; product and process technology. Since IT is an embedded aspect of process technology and TQM dimension of information management.

ISO-9000 Certification
The certification to ISO-9000 program has been widely spread in practice and discussion on its benefits and barriers has gained popularity in research too [39]. ISO-9000 focuses on conformance and internal process improvement in an organization [40]. Various scholars have been arguing on the significant impact of ISO-9001 on the OP. There is evidence which suggests that organizations can bring internal improvements, or that ISO-9001 certification is helpful in maintaining or increasing market share [41]. Some authors have recognized and confirmed that ISO-9001 certification is important in gaining market access [42]. Some has argued that the standard does not bring improvement as it is too generic. Aarts and Vos [12] did not find impact of ISO-9001 on OP.
Mangula [43] has highlighted various other benefits of ISO certification including expansion of business relations and entrance to new or international market due to increased chances to win new work contacts. These benefits give rise to induce promptness in operational methodologies to meet customer demands in less time.
The author stressed that quality becomes an influential factor through ISO certification that positively affect performance, competitiveness and profitability.

Organization Performance
OP can be referred to the attainment of actual results by an organization against its intended targets. There could be various dimensions for indicating OP and number of studies has been carried out to investigate and discuss different indicators or parameters of OP. Barros, et. al. [8] has summarized the works of different authors and has suggested product quality, operational performance, employee satisfaction, customer satisfaction, market and financial performance as some of explicit OP indicators.
Zakuan, et. al. [3] measured OP through two levels of satisfaction (customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction) and through business results (including productivity, profitability and cost performance).
In this study five dimensions of OP have been taken that include product quality, customer satisfaction, operational efficiency, employee performance and business results.

Research Design
The

Research Survey
The research survey was conducted through selecting a random sample of 320 organizations in different provinces and cities of Pakistan. The survey was not specific to single kind of industry or sector but was spread across multiple industries and sectors including private, public, government, production, R&D, service,

Descriptive Statistics
The received responses were statistically analyzed with multiple techniques and graphs by use of Minitab software and SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science).   Table 3.

Analysis of Variance
No organizational contextual factor determined as

Reliability and Validity
Reliability is referred as the ability of an instrument to provide consistent results in repeated uses [47].
Cronbach's alpha is a statistic that is used to test reliability of questionnaire across various items [48]. The alpha value ranges from 0-1 where the higher value depicts higher level of internal consistency [49]. common benchmark and can be used to imply that the items measure the same construct [50]. Table 3 depicts that all values are achieved greater than 0.7 thus ensures the consistency of items.
Validity identifies how well individual items measure the same scale [11]. The items of main dimensions were mainly derived from literature review and MBNQA criteria. The content validity of the questionnaire was assured through peer review and review feedback from the consultants and professionals of the field. Construct validity is assured by the application of factor analysis conducted separately on each dimension of main constructs. It is determined that the set of items in each factor are composing or forming a single factor within that factor with Eigen value greater than 1.

Factor Analysis
Factor analysis is conducted separately on each factor in order to find that a factor can only be valid if all the items of that factor form a single variable with Eigen value greater than 1 [51]. The corresponding 'Eigen values' and '% of variation' are measured and presented in Table 4. All Eigen values are observed greater than 1, while '% of variance' for each factor is observed satisfactory except for 'customer focus' which is less than 50% in this case.
However the corresponding Cronbach's alpha and Eigen values are acceptable All KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Oklin) values observed greater than 0.7 for each factor which describes that sampling adequacy is good. KMO value greater than 0.5 has been recommended as acceptable [52]. Chi-square ( 2 ) values, as calculated from SPSS, attest the significance to achieve Bartlett's test of sphericity in the study.

Correlation Plot
The important aspect of the analysis was to determine the relationship of the dependant (OP) and independent variables (TQM and TM). All correlation values of the dimensions of main constructs were observed significant.

Regression Analysis
Regression Analysis generates an equation to describe the statistical relationship between one or more predictors and the response variable and to predict new observations. Regression results indicate the direction, size, and statistical significance of the relationship between a predictor and response. Linear regression is observed as a composite relationship among the three variables of the study.
Linear regression analysis of individual dimensions of TQM and TM is performed and it is determined that relationship of both independent variables is significant (p-values) with dependant variable (OP). However, relationship of two individual TQM dimensions; 'strategic planning' and 'information management', is insignificant while it is negative in case of 'information management'.

CONCLUSIONS
The quality management field has been extended as TQM