Assessing the Role of Quality Culture in Driving Innovation and Sustainable Business Excellence

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to evaluate the role of quality culture to create an innovation capability and sustainability in business excellence development as of the current organisations in the highly digitalized and competitive environment. Even though there are earlier studies reviewing total quality management (TQM) and innovation independently, a range of empirical studies has researched neither quality culture, innovation, nor sustainable business excellence as a cohesive structure of framework. To fill this gap, the study will assume a quantitative research design in form of a cross-sectional survey on managers and professionals involved in quality across different industries. To test the measurement and the structural models, the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) was applied, namely, the Partial Least Squares (PLS-SEM). The findings prove that the quality culture positively impacts greatly on innovation capability and sustainable business excellence, and the relationship has a role of innovation capability as a mediator. The structural model demonstrates a large share of variance in innovation (R²= moderate) and sustainable business excellence (R²= strong ) that has a great predictive power. The implications of these findings on managers include its practical use as a way to understand the strategic nature of the decision to incorporate the values and continuous improvement methods with the focus on quality in the context of initiating the innovation process and long-term excellence. The research will add to the body of literature on quality management and innovation by empirically confirming a holistic model of SEM, which connects organisational culture, innovation process, and sustainable business.