Assessing the Effect of Organizational Culture on the Application of Quality Management Practices in Palestinian Food Industries رسالة ماجستير

Abstract

Globalization and e-commerce have exposed local products to fierce competition, both with other local producers and with imported products. Consequently, this situation drives factories into adopting quality management (QM) practices in the workplace to maintain their position in the market, increase customer satisfaction, boost earnings and improve the quality of their performance. The shift towards quality practices is indeed a long-term process. However, the literature argues that organizational culture (OC) could influence the success of QM adoption. Still, there are relatively few studies concerning this subject, especially in developing countries, and few in Palestine, especially in the food industry. This study focuses on studying the Palestinian food industry sector, aiming firstly at modeling and empirically testing the impact of OC via employing the competing value framework (CVF) on infrastructure and core quality practices. Secondly, it explores the type of OC followed in the food sector. Besides investigating the degree of adoption of each of the seven dimensions of quality practices in this sector. Lastly, another relevant contribution from this study is to assess the influence of both OC and QM practices on quality performance. This study has employed a quantitative research approach. More specifically, a survey strategy was applied, and the necessary data was collected through an electronic questionnaire mailed to the targeted companies. Despite the fact that the sample size was 68 participants, the actual number of respondents was 70. The collected quantitative data was analyzed using the SMART-PLS software package and the partial least squares structural equation modeling (SEM-PLS) technique. VII The results of the analysis indicate that each type of the four OC's (Market, Clan, Adhocracy, Hierarchy) is capable of influencing one or more dimensions of QM practices. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, unlike other cultures, the market culture appears to be more capable of inducing applying both the infrastructure and core quality practices simultaneously. Meanwhile, clan culture has a significant influence on dimensions of QM practices related to infrastructure infrastructure, and adhocracy influences core, yet; hierarchy culture doesn’t affect either of them. Another important finding is that both types of QM practices affect quality performance. Moreover, clan culture has a positive moderating effect between infrastructure QM practices and performance quality