Quality and empowerment programs: dual paths to customer satisfaction?

Members of the Original Equipment Manufacturer Group (OMEG) at National Semiconductor Corporation (NSC) were used to help answer the question of whether empowerment programs, independent of quality improvement programs such as total quality management (TQM), create customer satisfaction. Results of a customer satisfaction survey, administered to a sample of NSC customers prior to implementing an empowerment program and then again one year into the program, provided affirmative support for our research question. Finally, a conceptual model suggesting a process by which empowerment programs create customer satisfaction is proposed to provide direction for future research.