Organisational practices and total quality management : the mediating role of employee engagement and job satisfaction

Abstract

The global scenario today, requires that an organisation is at all levels and in all its different aspects fully functional and operational. This is essential because the organisational divisions namely the stakeholders, operations, human resources, marketing, management and employees are all interrelated. Amongst these, the employee becomes the most critical stakeholder of the company. Thus, it is crucial that each employee feels motivated to work as it will maintain organisational productivity as well as enhance the company’s brand value. In order to establish this, organisations have to take care of organisational practices that include recruitment and selection, technological improvement, training and development, job satisfaction, performance management, internal communication, quality system improvement and organisational support. According to the literature, employee engagement and job satisfaction are perceived to be the mediating factors in the relationship between internal organisational practices and Total Quality Management. This study focused on the banking sector, and the roles of employee engagement and job satisfaction as mediators of Total Quality Management and Internal Organisational Practice. The research applied self-constructed instruments to measure Total Quality Management and the short version of the established UWES measuring instrument that was reduced to nine questions to measure employee engagement. Job Satisfaction was assessed using Job Satisfaction Scale (JSS). A questionnaire was formulated in correspondence with the research questions. It was then divided into different sections such as biographical data, job satisfaction, training and development, employee engagement, Organisational practices, performance management, recruitment and selection, Organisational support, internal communications, Total Quality Management, quality systems improvement and technology improvement. The research confirms that statistically significant positive correlations (practically significant, large effect) exist between employee engagement and job satisfaction. This is indicative that, the more engaged employees are, the more satisfied they will be with their job, and vice versa. No correlations were however, found in the sample of employees working in the banking industry between employee engagement, job satisfaction and organisational practices. Also, there is no correlation between employee engagement, job satisfaction and Total Quality Management. Yet, statistically significant positive correlations (practically significant, large effect) existed between the constructs of organisational practices, i.e. performance management, recruitment and selection, organisational support, internal communication, training and development and the combined organisational practices construct and the constructs of Total Quality Management, i.e. Total Quality Management General, quality system improvement, technology improvement and the combined Total Quality Management construct. Regression analysis was used to determine the mediating effect of employee engagement and job satisfaction between Organisational practices and Total Quality Management. Results indicate that although organisational practices are significant predictors of Total Quality Management, neither employee engagement nor job satisfaction mediate this relationship