The Effectiveness of "Total Quality Management Practice" on "Innovation Performance" through "Organizational Learning Capability" in Bunkering Industry

This study aims to investigate the effectiveness of “total quality management practice” on “innovation performance” through “organizational learning capability” in bunkering (marine refueling) industry; therefore, the researcher tends to explore the key dimensions in defining “total quality management practice”, “organizational learning capability” and “innovation performance” and the nature of the relationship among their related particles and to analyze the following hypotheses. To do so,  Vanich, Chinchai & Igel (2011) and Eagle’s model was used to analyze total quality management practices. Through this model, total quality management practice are categorized into four classes of “commitment and strategy”, “customer-centeredness”, “human resources management”, and “data analysis”. In addition, Gomes et.al model was used to analyze organizational learning capability where total quality management practices were classified into four groups of “management commitment”, “systemic perspective”, “openness and trial and error”, and “knowledge transfer and integration”. Finally, Hong et.al model was used to investigate innovation performance. Within their model, innovation performance was categorized into three classes of “product/service performance”, “process performance”, and “organizational performance”. This non-experimental – descriptive study is applied in nature and is considered correlational. The present study uses “structural equation modeling” to respond to the research questions; therefore, it is categorized as “correlation matrix or covariance analysis” study. Based on simple random sampling, the experts in the target industry were given questionnaires and, at the end, 151 valid questionnaires were collected. Finally, the proposed conceptual model was investigated using factor analysis and structural equation modeling. The main data collection methods used in the present study were library survey and field study. The required data, regarding theoretical and empirical concepts in the literature, were collected using library resources, articles, books, journals and the internet. The results showed that “total quality management practices” have significant effects on “organizational learning capability” (15.59) and also “organizational learning capability” has significant effects on “innovation performance” (2.27). We can also claim that there is no significant relationship between “total quality management practices” and “innovation performance” (0.7); therefore, no direct relationship between these two variables is accepted at 95%. However, there would be an indirect relationship between “total quality management practices” and “innovation performance” through the mediating role of “organizational learning capability”. As a result, H1 is rejected, but H2 is accepted. Finally, we can state that the main hypothesis of the present study – the effectiveness of “total quality management practices” on “innovation performance” through the mediating role of “organizational learning capability” in bunkering industry- was accepted at 95%. Based on the findings, we can conclude that “total quality management practices” affect “organizational learning capability” within bunkering firms; in fact, “total quality management practices” can predict around 85% of the changes in “organizational learning capability”. According to the results of the ultimate model in this study, it can be inferred that “organizational learning capability” plays the role of an intervening variable and indirectly paves the way for “total quality management practices” to have effects on “innovation performance”. In other words, based on the standard prediction path analysis, “total quality management practices” can predict 46% of the changes in “innovation performance” considering the mediating role of “organizational learning capability”.