TQM practices in service organizations: an exploratory study into the implementation, outcome and effectiveness

The literature clearly indicates that service organizations are lagging behind their manufacturing counterparts in terms of the effective deployment of total quality management (TQM) practices aimed at achieving operational and strategic objectives. The objective of this study is to shed some light on the current TQM practices of service organizations. In general, the results of this study appear to confirm the reported literature findings concerning outcomes and benefits of effective TQM implementation. More importantly, the results underscore the differences in TQM implementation practices and benefits due to some industry‐specific factors. The lack of commitment to TQM implementation on the part of high percentage of the surveyed service organizations in this study is alarming.