Benefits from TQM for organisational performance

Abstract: Total Quality Management (TQM) is sometimes considered as a management system in continuous change and consisting of values, methodologies and tools, the aim of which is to increase external and internal customer satisfaction with a reduced amount of resources. Whether TQM improves the performance of companies has been discussed for several years. One way to work with TQM and its values, methodologies and tools is to apply for and work with a quality award. Today, there are international, national, regional, branch-wise and in-company quality awards. The purpose of this thesis is to evaluate whether and describe how working with quality awards affects the performance of companies. The thesis consists of an extended summary and three appended papers on this subject, each one with a different aim and methodology. Two of the papers study the benefits from in-company quality awards for the performance of units, and one paper studies the financial performance of quality award recipients compared with competitors and branch indices. The main conclusion of the thesis, which strengthens earlier published results, is that working with quality awards affects financial performance positively if companies successfully implement TQM, which is the case for quality award recipients. Moreover, the results of this thesis have not been able to show strong evidence proving that the performance of units which have worked with in-company quality awards, but have not yet successfully implemented TQM, are affected by this work. However, such units experience that working with in-company quality awards has positive effects on the customers as well as the employees.