Total quality management in SMEs

Small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) are the life blood of modern economies. That they should remain competitive and produce high quality outputs is of importance not only at the macro level but also to larger organizations, because SMEs are often suppliers of goods and services to larger organizations and lack of product quality would adversely affect the competitive ability of the larger organizations. Total Quality Management (TQM) is considered an important quality improvement tool. Compared with large organizations, SMEs have been slow to adopt TQM. This paper initially examines the differences between the characteristics of SMEs and large organizations; the relationship between the size of organization and inherent characteristics of TQM; and the effect of organization size on the implementation of TQM using deductive research. These issues are further examined through inductive research. For this purpose the development of TQM was studied in four small-medium size organizations.