Adoption of quality management practices: An investigation of its relationship with labor productivity for labor-intensive manufacturing companies
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between quality management practice and labor productivity in labor-intensive manufacturing companies in a developing nation and benchmark with the world average.
Design/methodology/approach
Primary and secondary data were collected from 34 selected companies. The primary data were obtained using a questionnaire survey to determine the quality management adoption level of each company using the European Business Excellence Model. Secondary data also collected in order to compute labor productivity of each organization and benchmark with international norms.
Findings
In this research, labor productivity is measured by revenues per employee and total assets per employee and found that adopting quality management has strong relationships with revenue per employee unlike total asset per employee that is weakly related.
Originality/value
Several authors suggest a positive relationship between adoption quality management principles and productivity in large organizations located in developed countries. However, this paper particularly focuses on labor productivity of labor-intensive companies.
Keywords
Citation
Moges Belay, A., Moges Kasie, F., Helo, P., Takala, J. and J. Powell, D. (2014), "Adoption of quality management practices: An investigation of its relationship with labor productivity for labor-intensive manufacturing companies", Benchmarking: An International Journal, Vol. 21 No. 1, pp. 77-100. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-02-2012-0011
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2014, Emerald Group Publishing Limited