Total Quality Management Practices And Competitive Advantage In The Aviation Industry In Kenya

Abstract

Quality has become an important aspect for organizations in terms of the products and services that they offer their clients. There has been a paradigm shift in the needs and expectations of customers and quality has been emphasized. This has led to stiff competition among organizations in the business environment who work towards being better than their competitors and thus attaining a competitive advantage. To achieve this organizations strive to price their products reasonably if not low, and also enhance the values and benefits of their products. This study aimed at establishing the TQM practices that organizations have adopted in their quest for achieving a competitive advantage. This study also aimed at establishing the effects of these practices on the performance of the organization as far as positioning the firm is concerned on a competitive advantage alignment. Forty companies in the aviation industry operating in Kenya were studied. A cross-sectional survey was done and data collected was analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software. Findings on TQM practices on sample basis indicated that respondents strongly agreed that the company has a good relationship with its suppliers with a mean of 4.821 and a deviation of 0.554. The study regression analysis indicated a positive relationship between total quality management and competitive advantage of the aviation industry in Kenya and the relationship was significant at 0.95 confidence level. In addition the resultant correlation analysis gave r = 0.628 (p = 0.005) which was statistically significant indicated a high correlation between the two variables under study. Various conclusions were arrived at from the findings of this study. Top leadership in organizations play an important role in implementing TQM practices. Provision of a good working environment for employees is key as well as their participation in strategy formulation activities of the organizations. Organizations need to embrace the culture of learning and development as it is important to continually train and develop the workforce. Supplier quality management and process quality management were also concluded as being key to improving the performance of the organization in general. Thus customer satisfaction is the ultimate goal of every organization. In order to attain this, organizations need to pay great attention to quality.