The role of individual differences in employee adoption of TQM orientation

While Total Quality Management (TQM) has emphasized organizational-level factors in achieving successful implementation, human capital theory and person-environmental fit models suggest individual difference factors may also be useful. Accordingly, the ability of organizational commitment, trust in colleagues, and higher order need strength to explain variation in TQM adoption, after inclusion of organizational level factors, is assessed using longitudinal data from a manufacturing setting. These three individual differences collectively explain 7% to19% of incremental variation in TQM adoption and are found to be relatively better predictors of TQM adoption than organizational level factors. The findings support increased consideration of individual differences in order to implement TQM and other forms of organizational change more effectively.