Total Quality Management (tqm) And Knowledge Management (km) Relationship Discussed

Since 1980s, thousands of enterprises around this world have come to recognize the need to refocus on the importance of Total Quality Management (TQM) on their quality perspective, to maintain the competitive power as well as smooth and substantial development of their business. So far, in one hand, academic researches hold that the growing interest in TQM and its effect on competitive performance cannot be ignored. Therefore, a series of empirical researches have been achieved, meanwhile, several research frameworks on TQM have been figured out; on the other hand, many practitioners regard TQM as a kind of integrated managerial philosophy and a set of practice which lays emphasis on meeting customers'needs, constant improvement, rework reducing, wide-range thinking, enforcing teamwork and so on. At the same moment, apart from TQM, another excellent management philosophy has also gained great focus from our business and academic place. Books, papers and experiments on KM come out like an unending flow. Moreover, more and more companies are introducing and carrying on KM activities. Even most enterprises are commonly viewing that KM is a critical factor for success in this dynamic society without obvious border. Consequently, a lot of managerial career position, like knowledge manager and knowledge creating team, are established in many companies. However, so far, researches on the connecting issue between TQM and KM are rare and incomplete. Both the research methods and the frameworks are not constructive enough and lack of evidences. So, this study is aimed at confirming the efforts and contributions of academic and business community about TQM and KM issues, and then further exploring the relationship between this two management types and practices.The study is held on the basis of talking about the critical factors of TQM and the KM value chain activities. Qualitative research method-case study, as well as statistical analysis via simple investigation are the two main research methods. The three propositions about the relationships between TQM and KM are proposed. The first is TQM critical factors can work as the guidance of KM practical directions; secondly KM value chain activities can be regarded as an action program for TQM critical factors. The last proposition is that there exist multiple effects between these two managerial philosophies. These propositions will hopefully be the reference for the organizations that are interested in TQM and KM introduction and for those that are making decisions on which management type to choose from.