The impact of total quality management on innovation: Findings from a developing country

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between total quality management (TQM) practices and innovation performance in the Vietnamese industry context. The method of confirmatory factor analysis was applied to refine TQM and innovation scales for empirical analysis in Vietnam. The structural equation modelling method was applied to test the theoretical models. This study confirms the results of previous studies that considered TQM as a set of practices. It confirms that TQM - considered as a set of practices - has a positive impact on the firm's innovativeness. It discovers that not all TQM practices enhance firm innovativeness. Only leadership and people management, process and strategic management, and open organization showed a positive impact on the firm's innovation performance. The sample was not random. Future research should select different random samples to allow for more generalization of the results. The study assessed the concept of "newness" with the company boundaries. Future research should measure "newness" within the boundaries of the specific industry.