Investigating the impact of quality management systems on business performance

In this paper, we study the problem of assessing the impact of quality management systems (QMS) on business performance of organisations. Several mediatory variables linking QMS and business performance namely information quality, design performance, operating and environmental performance, supplier relationships, customer relationships, product quality, service quality, and competitive priorities are investigated. Twelve hypotheses linking the impact of these factors on each other, QMS and business performance are proposed. Based on these hypotheses, a questionnaire instrument is developed. A survey study is conducted with industry professionals involved in quality management and engineering and the results analysed using factor analysis and regression analysis. The results of our study show that organisations often implement QMS as a catalyst for change and use them in daily practice. All the proposed hypotheses are found to be true indicating positive relationship between implementation of QMS and business performance and mediatory variables under study.