Innovative culture and total quality management as a tool for sustainable competitiveness: a case study of Turkish fruit and vegetable processing industry

The paper aims to explore the dimensions of quality management practices as a tool for innovativeness and determine the which dimensions of the quality management practices best differentiates the firms with low innovative culture from the firms with high innovative culture. A mail survey with a sample of processed fruit and vegetable product exporters in Turkey was conducted using a structured questionnaire. Factor analysis is used to reduce the 22 total quality management practices into a smaller set of dimensions. The resulting dimensions (factors) were used as independent variables for discriminant analysis. Discriminant analysis follows from the findings of previous research in which two independent firm clusters were identified through cluster analysis using quality management variables. Following the cluster definitions of the previous research, the dependent variable of the discriminant function measures whether the firm is characterized by low innovativeness or high innovativeness. Factor analysis reduced 22 quality management practices into 6 factors. The quality management dimension that best discriminates the two groups is standardication of work. Presence or absence of ISO certificate did not reveal much power to differentiate the two groups.