Many scholars have suggested that both total quality management (TQM) and organizational learning can individually and effectively promote innovation. However, the question remains as to whether a relationship exists between TQM and organizational learning. This study has three main goals: (1) to determine the relationships between TQM, organizational learning, and innovation performance; (2) to determine if organizational learning fosters innovation performance and plays a mediating role between TQM and innovation performance, and (3) to test a proposed model explaining the relationships among TQM, organizational learning, and innovation performance through empirical examination.
Using a self-administered survey to sample Taiwanese high-tech industry companies, this study examines four hypotheses and tests the proposed model. The principal findings of this study are as follows; (1) SEM analysis shows that the TQM-organizational learning-innovation performance model has goodness-of-fit, (2) TQM has significant and positive effects on organizational learning, and (3) TQM and organizational learning have both significant and positive effects on innovation performance.
