Determinants of the green quality practices towards sustainable quality management

Environmental issues constitute continuous concern for governments, societies and business organisations. Green quality (GQ) emerged as a new approach that extends environmental responsibility of organisations in maintaining their quality performance. This paper investigates the existence of GQ practices in Malaysia, its antecedents that motivate firms to adopt these practices, and the outcome of adoption. To attain these objectives, this study utilises quantitative approach by distributing survey questionnaires to ISO 14001 certified companies in Malaysia. A total of 108 usable responses were received. This study examines the relationships between GQ practices which is the product lifecycle management with five variables of antecedents (management commitment, employee awareness, worker health and safety, available resources, internal efficiency and customer requirements), and GQ practices with sustainable quality management (SQM). The results of the survey indicate that only customer requirements have positive effect on the adoption of GQ practices. However, the study finds no convincing evidence to support the correlation between GQ practices and SQM.