The TQM Magazine

Does soft TQM predict employees’ attitudes?

Ooi Keng Boon V. Arumugam Teo Seng Hwa
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Ooi Keng Boon V. Arumugam Teo Seng Hwa, (2005),"Does soft TQM predict employees’ attitudes?", The
TQM Magazine, Vol. 17 Iss 3 pp. 279 - 289
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CASE STUDIES Employees’

attitudes
Does soft TQM predict
employees’ attitudes?
279
Ooi Keng Boon and V. Arumugam
Business and Advanced Technology Centre (BATC), University of Technology
Malaysia (UTM), Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and
Teo Seng Hwa
HR Department, Carsem (M) Sdn Bhd, Ipoh, Malaysia
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Abstract
Purpose – This study seeks to investigate the effects of soft total quality management (TQM) on
employees’ attitudes within a large Malaysian semiconductor organization. Despite extensive research
on “soft” TQM practices, there has not been much research this area. Therefore, the proposed model
was developed with the intention of examining this relationship.
Design/methodology/approach – Original research using self-completed questionnaires,
distributed to all staff within this organization, is thoroughly reported. The study sample consisted
of 230 employees, resulting in a response rate of 76.6 percent. Data were analyzed by the latest version
of SPSS, employing correlation and multiple regression analysis.
Findings – The results revealed that employees’ perceptions of soft TQM significantly relate to
employees’ attitudes with those perceiving a greater degree of awareness of soft TQM exhibiting more
positive reactions towards job involvement, career satisfaction and organizational commitment. It is
also found that, where teamwork was a dominant soft TQM practice, strong associations with
employees’ attitudes existed. This analysis gives new insight into “soft” TQM concepts and,
furthermore, the results of the multiple regression analysis confirmed that all variables were
significantly related to perceptions of soft TQM practices and thus implementing TQM does pay off.
The results also support the proposed model based on the empirically validated soft TQM
instruments, which are reliable and valid.
Originality/value – The significance of this study would enable top management to strategize their
goal alignments, which would eventually help promote mutual understanding between the
management and employees and thus yielding significant results on employees’ attitudes. The
conclusions, limitations and implications of the study are also extensively discussed.
Keywords Total quality management, Employee attitudes, Job satisfaction, Malaysia
Paper type Case study

Introduction
The emphasis on total quality management (TQM) as a management philosophy
and a new way of managing organization to improve its overall effectiveness and
the performance towards achieving world-class status has increased considerably
over the past few decades. TQM has been described as a shift in thought patterns
(Spenser, 1994) or “thought revolution” in management (Ishikawa, 1985) when
referring to the management of an organization. As Wood and Peccei (1995) stated,
The TQM Magazine
TQM is widely agreed as a way of managing organizations with the notion to Vol. 17 No. 3, 2005
enhance employees’ attitudes. High levels of quality consciousness during the pp. 279-289
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
development of TQM result in both basic preconditions for TQM’s ultimate 0954-478X
success and its primary aim during the initial stages of most TQM interventions. DOI 10.1108/09544780510594243
 TQM This is because the effectiveness of the implementation of TQM is also widely
assumed to involve the revolutionary extension in proliferation to all levels within
17,3 the organization.
Quality practitioners such as Deming (1986), Crosby (1979), Juran (1991) and
Feigenbaum (1983) have written much on the idea of TQM philosophies and methods.
Surprisingly, a limited amount of rigorous research has been done towards identifying
280 the effects of soft TQM practices on employees’ work-related attitudes. The results
have been interesting but inconclusive.
Guimaraes (1996) found that in order to attain successful implementation,
several people-oriented aspects of TQM should be initially well understood. This
also reveals that management has an important role to play, in striking a balance
between the “soft” as well as “hard” aspects of TQM to ensure a successful
implementation process. However, in the past decade, TQM has received
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considerable attention and much has been written about the hard or technical
aspects of TQM but has neglected the “soft” aspects to a certain extent. A survey
of the literature reveals that several TQM proponents believe that the soft aspects
of TQM are essential to the success of TQM (Juran, 1964; Ishikawa, 1985; Deming,
1986; Aubrey and Felkins, 1998; Dale et al., 1992; Cruickshank, 2000). Powell (1995,
p. 15) concluded that “organizations that acquire the soft elements of TQM can
outperform competitors without the accompanying TQM ideology.” Evidence from
the growing literature on TQM failure emphasizes the neglect of the “soft” side of
quality management wherein the HR and organizational behavior aspects of
quality management are not given their deserved emphasis (Lowery et al., 2000;
Wilkinson et al., 1998; Cruickshank, 2000).
In view of the lack of emphasis on the “soft” aspects of TQM and the absence of
such research on the relationship between the implementation of TQM and employees’
work-related attitudes, therefore, this study addresses the two research questions:
(1) What essential soft TQM implementation practices should be developed that
would prove to be an effective guide in the measurement of employees’
work-related attitudes?
(2) Does soft TQM predict employees’ work-related attitudes?
This research is particularly important, as previous research provides very little
evidence concerning these research questions. Thus, an investigation into the effect of
soft TQM would have to be conducted in order to bridge this gap. Such a study
explores the degree of impact, in which the implementation of soft TQM poses to
benefit the organization’s employees, and thus measuring its impact on the employees’
work-related attitudes apart from identifying problem areas and respectively, their
possible remedies.
The purpose of this investigation is to measure the extent of the impact employees’
perceptions have in relation to the implementation of soft TQM that have become an
integral component of an organization where work attitudes are proposed. It was
expected that employees’ who perceived greater soft TQM exhibiting the more positive
reaction in favor of the employees’ work-related attitudes such as job involvement,
organization involvement and career satisfaction and turnover intentions. Comparison
of the findings with the previous study conducted by Guimaraes (1996) and Karia and
Ahmad (2000) strengthens the conclusion of this study. Also, this research attempts to
identify and investigate areas of prominent improvement in employees’ attitudes
within a large Malaysian Semiconductor Subcontracting organization.
 Indicators of employees’ work-related attitudes Employees’
The concept of the “employees’ attitudes” encompasses a wide range of organizational
phenomena (Loscocco and Roschelle, 1991). However, the most relevant aspect of this
attitudes
study is the view that employees’ attitudes are “the extent to which members of a work
organization are able to satisfy important individual needs through their experiences in
the organization.” Thus, the employee attitudes of an individual are defined “by the
individual’s affective reactions to both objective and experienced characteristics of the 281
work organization” (Igbaria et al., 1994, p. 1). The employees’ attitudes selected for
inclusion in this study are job involvement, career satisfaction, and organizational
commitment. In fact, Guimaraes (1996) already implicitly addressed these constructs.
Quality practitioners such as Deming (1986), Juran (1991) and Ishikawa (1985) shared
the view that “an organization’s primary purpose is to stay in business, so that it can
provide a setting for the satisfaction and growth of organization members” (Zhang,
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2000, p. 42). The focus is on the preservation and health of the organization, but there
also are explicitly stated values about the organization’s context and about the
well-being of individual organizational members. The importance of the three
constructs of employees’ attitudes is described below.
Job involvement is likely to be affected by aspects of organizational culture. Job
involvement is important because of well-established associations with a range of
organizational outcome (Gray et al., 2003). It is also found that employees who are more
involved in jobs are more satisfied with their jobs and can be expected to be more
committed to their organization (O’Driscoll and Randall, 1999). Career satisfaction was
included since such satisfaction refers to overall affective reaction of individuals to
their career (Greenhaus et al., 1990). It is reasonable to expect that high levels of career
satisfaction would enhance organizational commitment since employees who are
satisfied with their careers should perceive greater benefits in retaining membership in
their organization than employees whose career have been less gratifying (Igbaria and
Greenhaus, 1992). Organizational commitment, as reflected to an affective reaction of
employees’ commitment to the whole organization, was chosen on the grounds of
influencing turnover intentions. Employees who are highly committed towards their
organization are more likely to stay than those who are relatively uncommitted (Tett
and Meyer, 1993).

Conceptual research framework and hypotheses

The conceptual scheme of this study focuses on the development of a theoretical soft
TQM model in measuring the employees’ work-related attitudes within a large
Malaysian Semiconductor Subcontracting organization. These studies indicated that
only a handful of the soft aspects of TQM (i.e. “human factors” like empowerment,
education and training, teamwork and so on) contribute towards employees’
work-related attitudes.
In this approach, the authors focus on the challenges posed for soft TQM practices
by the growth of interest in improving employees’ attitudes. In previous TQM
literatures, there seem to be a general understanding regarding the type of TQM
activities that contribute towards the development of “business excellence” and the
ability to deal with people. Dale (1999) enumerates that the basic key practices relevant
to organizational excellence from a TQM perspectives consists of leadership; training;
involvement and participation of employees; cooperation, customer focus and
organizational culture. In this paper we base our discussion of soft TQM practices on
an enriched and slightly modified version of Dale’s (1999) identification of
 TQM “organizational excellence” of key practices, which support an organization’s business
strategy towards improvement of employees’ attitudes. Thus, the implementation of
17,3 TQM elements adopted in this study includes leadership, education and training,
employees’ participation, customer focus, organizational culture and teamwork. Dale
(1999) further enumerates that these practices are relevant to organizational excellence
and people-oriented aspects from a TQM perspective.
282 Examining relationship between soft TQM and employees’ work-related attitudes
should contribute to our knowledge of the complexity of the relationship that exists
between them. In this study, the authors propose a logical approach to study these
relationships as depicted in Figure 1. In this theoretical framework, soft TQM practices
are independent variables and job involvement; career satisfaction, and organizational
commitment are dependent variables. The present study thus attempts to fill gap by
providing a basis for a thorough and insightful discernment of soft TQM and
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employees’ attitudes.

Soft TQM and employees’ work-related attitudes

To date, literature examining the relationship between the institutionalization of soft
TQM and work-related outcomes has been mainly anecdotal (Morrow, 1997). TQM has
been found to have an important influence on an individual’s affective reactions to
organizational life within a TQM environment.
Empirical reviews of soft TQM that affect employees’ attitudes are discussed in this
section. For instance, a longitudinal case study (Coyle-Shapiro, 1996) analyses were
conducted on the impact of TQM intervention on work attitudes. This “before and after
study” examines the impact of a “soft” TQM intervention on two key elements of TQM:
teamwork and continuous improvement At the individual level, the intervention was
found to have had a significant effect on team orientation as well as on a number of
continuous improvements, including general orientation to quality, improvement as
part of the job and intrinsic motivation.
Theoretical framework of TQM practices on employees’ attitudes
In an investigative study conducted by Morrow (1997), on the measurement of “soft”
TQM principles (i.e. customer focus, continuous improvement, and teamwork) and the
effects on work-related outcomes (i.e. job satisfaction, communication and perceptions
of the work environment), derived from a survey of 2,249 employees of a large
mid-western organization indicated that reasonably reliable and distinct measures
were developed and that the adoption of soft TQM principles were associated with
more favorable work-related outcomes.
Karia and Ahmad (2000) conducted a survey on the impact of empowerment and
teamwork (E&T) on employees’ work-related attitudes and had identified total
employee involvement, employee suggestion programs, employee empowerment and
teamwork as “soft” TQM practices. These concepts are similar in that they involved
ideas such as the empowered-work team, employee suggestion program, employee’s
participation in decision making and problem solving, employee autonomy and
organizational trust. A total of 104 employees were sampled from five organizations
operating within Penang, Malaysia that practice TQM. The findings of the study
revealed that the implementation of “soft” TQM practices does have an impact on
employees’ job involvement, organizational commitment and career satisfaction as
well as improve all aspects of employees’ work-related attitudes. In summary, the E&T
as “soft” TQM practices are powerful instruments for quality culture that encourages
employee involvement, motivation, satisfaction and commitment.
 Employees’
attitudes

283
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Figure 1.
Theoretical framework of
TQM practices on
employees’ attitudes
 TQM Another study conducted by Boselie and van der Wiele (2001) with the support of
International Survey Research (London, UK) was on employees’ perception of
17,3 TQM/human resource management (HRM) and the effect on overall satisfaction and
intention to leave from a knowledge-intensive organization in The Netherlands. The
survey conducted in year 2000 led to a response group of approximately 2300 records
(response rate was 50 percent). The analysis reveals that a positive perception of
284 individual employees on the TQM/HRM concept (i.e. also known as “soft” TQM) leads
to a higher level of satisfaction and thus, reducing intention to leave the organization.
Based on the extensive study of previous research on soft TQM and employees’
work-related attitudes, thus, the following hypotheses were proposed:
H1. Employees’ perceptions of soft TQM practices will be significantly related to
employees’ attitudes, with those perceiving greater degree of soft TQM
practices exhibiting more positive to employees’ attitudes in their
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organization.
Specifically:
H1a. Soft TQM practices lead to a positive impact on job involvement.
H1b. Soft TQM practices lead to a positive impact on career satisfaction.
H1c. Soft TQM practices lead to a positive impact on organizational commitment.
The above review indicates that a firm’s soft TQM have a significant impact on
employees’ work-related attitudes. The contribution of this study would provide
insights to enable top management in Malaysian organizations to evaluate the
effectiveness of their TQM programs. This would enable top management to strategize
their goal alignments which would eventually help promote mutual understanding
between the management and employees and thus strengthen the cooperation within
the organization leading towards achieving world class status and yielding significant
results on employees’ overall work-related attitudes.

Methodology
In this section we discuss sample and data collection procedures and operational
measures of variables used in the study as well as the statistical tests used to evaluate
the hypotheses.

Sampling procedure
Data were collected from employees within various departments of a large TQM
prize-winning (i.e. Quality Management Excellence Award) semiconductor
subcontracting organization located in the state of Perak, Malaysia. The unit of
study was employees in the company, as this study aims to measure the impact of soft
TQM on employees’ work-related attitudes.
The questionnaire survey was the main form of data collection. The questionnaires
were distributed to all employees from different job levels and functions within the
organization. They were distributed through an officer/coordinator from either the
human resource or administration department in the organization. A covering letter
explaining the purpose of this study was attached together, assuring them of the
confidentiality of their responses, and instructing them to complete the questions, seal
and return the completed questionnaires using the attached envelope. Out of the 300
 questionnaires distributed to employees in this organization, 230 questionnaires were Employees’
returned, yielding a response rate of 76.6 percent, which is considered acceptable.
There were 152 female and 78 male respondents. The age range of the sample was
attitudes
from 21 to 45 years with a mean of 33 years. Out of 230 respondents, 82 (over 35
percent) had achieved at least a high school qualification. Employees from four types of
occupational groups are represented in the sample (i.e. operators, n ¼ 134; staff,
n ¼ 69; executive, n ¼ 21; managers, n ¼ 6). The operator positions included resource 285
and production groups personnel. The staff positions included personnel and general
clerks. The executive classification included engineers, supervisors, accountants and
programmers. The managerial group included middle managers and senior managers
responsible for a single section or several work areas.
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Measurements
Operational dimensions of TQM practices. The questionnaires on TQM dimensions
were adopted from Zhang (1999) and Lau and Idris (2001). A total of 23 items were
identified as TQM practices. These items were grouped into six elements (scales) and
the coefficient alpha calculated for each element. The reliability coefficient (Cronbach’s
alpha) is tabulated in Table I.
Operational dimensions of employees’ attitudes. A three-item scale was adapted from
the study of Kanungo (1982), to capture job involvement. The five-item scale developed
by Mowday et al. (1979) was used to measure organizational commitment. Career
satisfaction was measure by a four-item scale adapted from Greenhaus et al. (1990). For
each item, responses were measured on a five-point Likert scale ranging from “strongly
disagree” (1) to “strongly agree” (5). The reliability coefficient is tabulated in Table I.

Data analysis
The statistical computer program used for the questionnaire data analysis was SPSS
for Windows Version 11.0. Correlation studies were used to determine the relationship
between the dependent and independent variables. TQM practices were regressed
against job involvement, career satisfaction, and organizational commitment. The
regression analyses confirmed the significance of the independent and dependent
variables.

Mean SD Reliability 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Top management 3.883 0.510 0.615

Education and training 3.880 0.498 0.687 0.479*
Employee participation 3.900 0.537 0.684 0.554* 0.658*
Customer focus 3.692 0.603 0.699 0.559* 0.552* 0.559*
Organizational culture 3.719 0.587 0.719 0.420* 0.448* 0.511* 0.554*
Table I.
Teamwork 3.912 0.558 0.737 0.397* 0.446* 0.470* 0.380* 0.513*
Means, standard
Job involvement 3.698 0.666 0.663 0.356* 0.340* 0.367* 0.414* 0.425* 0.445*
deviations, reliability and
Career satisfaction 3.777 0.625 0.770 0.436* 0.412* 0.437* 0.438* 0.453* 0.532* 0.736*
correlation for soft TQM
Commitment 3.855 0.537 0.813 0.315* 0.410* 0.419* 0.368* 0.463* 0.495* 0.626* 0.537*
practices and employees’
Note: * Correlation significant at 0.01 levels (two-tailed) attitudes (n ¼ 230)
 TQM Results
17,3 Descriptive statistical and reliability tests for the total sample are presented in Table I.
All of the reliabilities are above the 0.60 scale and are considerably acceptable
(Nunnally, 1967). The degree of impact soft TQM have on employees’ attitudes in the
organization was largely positive. The standard deviations were moderately high,
indicating that the dispersion was in a widely spread distributive manner. This means
286 that the soft TQM practices on employees’ attitudes are an approximation to a normal
distribution indicating that the respondents’ attitudes were favorable.
The correlation matrix in Table I indicates that soft TQM practices were positively
and moderately correlated with employees’ attitudes. There were strong positive
relationships between teamwork and employees’ attitudes, namely job involvement
(r ¼ 0:4452, p , 0:01), career satisfaction (r ¼ 0:5322, p , 0:01), and organizational
commitment (r ¼ 0:4953, p , 0:01). All the other soft TQM practices revealed positive
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significant correlation with employees’ attitudes, although at a less strong level. In

other words, the results indicate that the most important soft TQM practice on
employees’ attitudes was teamwork (i.e. with the highest values of correlation), which
goes to prove that teamwork directly contributes towards employees’ attitudes. Other
factors such as leadership, education and training, customer focus, employee
participation and organizational culture could be an indirect contribution towards the
employees’ attitudes. The findings show that the respondents who better perceived soft
TQM exhibited the more positive reactions in favor of the employees’ work-related
attitudes. Thus, an overall hypothesis concluding, “soft TQM practices lead to positive
effects on employees’ attitudes” is acceptable.
Multiple regression analysis was undertaken to better understanding the relative
impact of soft TQM practices on employees’ work-related attitudes. The summary of
the result analysis is depicted in Table II.

H1a
H1a measures the soft TQM practices and its association with job involvement. This
hypothesis states that employees exposed to high level of soft TQM practices will
experience high levels of job involvement. The F-statistics produced (F ¼ 15:05) was
significant at the 99 percent level. The coefficient of determination, R 2 is 28.83 percent.
This explains that 28.83 percent of variation in job involvement is due to soft TQM
practices. Thus, H1a was accepted.

Hypothesis statementa R 2 (%) F-ratio Result

H1a. Soft TQM practices contribute towards job involvement 28.83 15.05 Accept
H1b. Soft TQM practices contribute towards career satisfaction 38.09 22.86 Accept
H1c. Soft TQM practices contribute towards organizational commitment 33.18 18.45 Accept
Table II. Note: a Soft TQM practices (i.e. top management, education and training, employee participation,
Summary of multiple customer focus, organizational culture and teamwork) contribute towards employees’ work-related
regression analysis attitudes
 H1b Employees’
H1b measures the relationship of soft TQM practices and its effects on career
satisfaction. This hypothesis states that employees exposed to high level of soft TQM
attitudes
practices practiced will experience high levels of career satisfaction. The F-statistics
produced (F ¼ 22:86) was significantly at the 99 percent level. The regression analysis
shows that 38.09 percent of variance in carrier satisfaction is due to TQM soft
elements. Thus H1b was accepted. 287
H1c
H1c measures the associations of soft TQM practices and its impact on organizational
commitment. This hypothesis states that employees exposed to high level of soft TQM
practices will experience high levels of organizational commitment. The F-statistics
produced ðF ¼ 18:45) was significant at the 99 percent level. This indicates that there
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is a statistically significant relationship between the soft TQM and organizational

commitment. The coefficient of determination, R 2 is 33.18 percent. This express that
soft TQM can significantly explain 33.18 percent of variances in the organizational
commitment. Thus H1c was accepted

Conclusions, implications and research limitations

The analysis reveals that a positive perception of individual employees on the soft
TQM concepts leads to a higher level of employees’ work-related attitudes within a
large Malaysian Semiconductor Subcontracting organization. Thus, soft TQM have a
significant impact on employees’ attitudes, namely job involvement, career
satisfaction, and organizational commitment. Broadly, the results provide empirical
support for the essential role of soft TQM in positive attitudes and perceptions in the
workplace. The result of multiple regression analysis confirmed that all of the
employees’ attitudes variables were significantly related to the perception of soft TQM.
The impact on perceptions of soft TQM was largest for career satisfaction, on the
overall, employees reported higher job involvement, career satisfaction and
commitment to the organization, within their organization. This study also supports
the findings from previous studies conducted by Karia and Ahmad (2000) and
Guimaraes (1996) who found that with TQM, on average, employees reported higher
job involvement, career satisfaction and more commitment towards their organization.
Thus, in terns of HRM goals and objectives one is encouraged to think that TQM
programs have a positive influence as Guimaraes (1996) indicates.
The authors realize that there are some limitations, which must be considered.
Firstly, the researchers did not include all semiconductor subcontracting organizations
in Malaysia, making this a possible biased selection. Secondly, the findings are based
on the use of self-reported survey data, which may be affected by response biases.
Finally, cross-sectional data analysis cannot confirm the direction of causality implied
in our research model, so it is necessary to be cautious in conclusions regarding
causality. It is proposed that future research should be conducted in other types of
organizations such as manufacturing and service using a similar approach.
Furthermore, a wider range of employees’ affective reactions such as task
characteristics, role ambiguity, role conflict and others can be incorporated into a
more comprehensive study, as this study chooses to cover only three types of
employees’ attitudes.
In summary, this paper reports an exploratory investigation of the relationship
between soft TQM practices and employees’ attitudes based on a large semiconductor
 TQM subcontracting organization studied, located in the State of Perak, Malaysia. The
development of the soft practices should provide useful measure for investigating the
17,3 relationship among soft TQM and employee outcomes particularly in relation to the
Malaysian semiconductor subcontracting organizations, where very few studies have
been conducted thus far. This study endeavors to make both theoretical and practical
contribution to the literature, and it also contains several implications for further
288 research. The findings identify all the aspects of soft TQM, which have an impact on
work attitudes and proves that implementing soft TQM does payoff. Further the
finding enhances our understanding of soft TQM and employees’ attitudes. To the best
of our knowledge, it is the first study that examines the relation between soft TQM and
employees’ attitudes within the semiconductor subcontracting environment. This
research has also provided us with a better understanding of the relationship between
these factors in order to enhance managerial effectiveness and organizational success.
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Finally, the higher levels of employees’ attitudes in such organizations may give an
advantage over other organizations in attracting and retaining employees in a
competitive environment.

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