Investigating the linkage between total quality management and environmentally responsible manufacturing

This paper explicitly examines the relationship that exists between total quality management (TQM) and environmentally responsible manufacturing (ERM) systems. It has been presumed in numerous past studies that such a relationship does exist. It has been argued that those firms that have successfully implemented a TQM system are better positioned to successfully implement an ERM system. This relationship, however, has not yet been statistically and empirically evaluated. In this study, the authors evaluate this relationship using a large-scale survey of plant managers as the data source and confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling as the statistical tools. The study develops a series of measures for various aspects of both TQM and ERM. The results show that there is indeed a strong relationship between TQM and ERM. In many ways, ERM is conditioned by the presence of TQM. Furthermore, ERM systems have a parallel structure when compared to TQM systems.