| Author: | Choy, Wai-cho Petrus. |
| Title: | Measuring factors that influence the success of quality management in the shipping industry |
| Degree: | D.B.A. |
| Year: | 2005 |
| Subject: | Hong Kong Polytechnic University -- Dissertations Shipping -- Management Organizational effectiveness -- Case studies |
| Department: | Graduate School of Business |
| Pages: | xiii, 217 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. |
| Language: | English |
| Abstract: | Global competition is increasingly severe as more countries are embracing the free market model and opening up their borders for investments and trading. To stay ahead, a company's fundamental business strategy must focus on seeking competitive advantages through enhancing its business excellence and performance. Quality management provides an effective approach in carrying out this fundamental business strategy and is considered as a valuable competitive factor capable of sustaining competitive advantages and obtaining superior results. It is generally accepted that companies that pursue sound quality management practices will become more competitive due to enhanced business excellence and performance. As such, quality management has become an indispensable and a globally pervasive strategic force in today's turbulent and dynamic business world. Shipping, a nascent traditional industry, remains the most important mode of transportation in international trade. Like other industries, the shipping industry is confronted with both traditional and new challenges, which have prompted shipping companies to seek continuous improvement in the performance of their core processes and services as a way to compete through quality management. Although there have been numerous studies examining the elements that constitute quality management and the relationship between quality management and organizational performance, relatively limited research is devoted to studying quality management issues and their organizational performance implications in the shipping industry, let alone studying the relationship between quality management practices and organizational performances. This study seeks to fill this research gap by identifying the quality management practices that are critically important and can successfully yield improved organizational performances in the context of the shipping industry. Data are obtained from the owner members of two of the world's major international maritime associations, namely the Baltic and International Maritime Council and the International Association of Independent Tanker Owners. An exploratory factor analysis and a scale validity are performed on the 161 valid responses, through which reliable, empirically-tested, and rigorously-validated measurement instruments are developed for measuring the quality management practices, containing a four-factor model with 16 measurement indicators, and the organizational performances, containing a three-factor model with nine measurement indicators, in the context of the shipping industry. This study goes further to examine and predict the relationship between the identified quality management practices and the identified organizational performances for the shipping industry by conducting multiple regression analyses, based on which it is found that all the identified quality management practices are positively related to the identified organizational performances. Based on the results of this study, it is concluded that quality management is considered as an effective management approach to improving organizational performances in the shipping industry. This study also contributes to academic research by providing further empirical evidences to support prior seminal works and by developing reliable, empirically-tested, and rigorously-validated measurement instruments for quality management practices and organizational performances in the context of the shipping industry, which capture most of the important aspects of effective quality management as recommended by contemporary leading quality management researchers and practitioners. This study further provides quality management practitioners in the shipping industry with significant information that they can use to cope with the implementation challenges of quality management, and identifies for them the quality management practices that are most able to improve organizational performances. This study provides support for both the continued practice and research pursuit of quality management since the results obtained help enrich the knowledge-base of the global quality improvement movement and encourage future research on quality management in the shipping industry. |
| Rights: | All rights reserved |
| Access: | restricted access |
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| File | Description | Size | Format | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| b18969410.pdf | For All Users (off-campus access for PolyU Staff & Students only) | 10.1 MB | Adobe PDF | View/Open |
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