The relationship between shared employee perceptions, attitudes, and quality outcomes and customer satisfactio

The importance of the bottom line is being emphasized more than ever. However, organizations are finding that they can no longer compete using strategies that promote the usual means for conducting business. They are striving for ways to maintain a competitive advantage. Companies are finding that one approach for achieving a competitive advantage is through a nontraditional focus on improving the quality of products and customer satisfaction. This focus is on shared employee attitudes and perceptions of the work environment. Increased understanding of the collective or shared attitudes and perceptions may have an effect on the organizational performance. The present study uses quality and customer satisfaction as indices of organizational performance for a large automotive manufacturer. The purpose of the present study was to examine the relationship between shared employee attitudes and perceptions and quality outcomes and customer satisfaction using both objective and perceptual, as well as internal and external criteria. Specifically, attitudes towards supervision, job satisfaction, and perceptions of teamwork, workload and stress, and quality focus were correlated with internal and external quality indicators and overall customer satisfaction with quality at the plant-level of analysis.;Results suggest that favorable shared employee attitudes and perceptions have a positive effect on the quality of products produced. Partial support was found the positive relationship between shared employee attitudes and perceptions and overall customer satisfaction with quality. Future research should examine potential moderators and mediators of the relationship.