Process control and quality performance: the role of shop-floor leadership practices

Abstract

Human Resource Management issues are a crucial factor in the effective implementation of tools and practices in the field of Quality Management. Our study addresses this issue by considering the existence of complementarities between Process Control (PC) and two shop-floor leadership practices (i.e. Shop-Floor Contact (SFC) and Supervisory Interaction Facilitation (SIF)), directed to promote contact and interaction between middle managers and supervisors with blue collar workers to explain quality performance, which is measured by Quality of Conformance (QC) and Customer Satisfaction (CS). The data used in this study were gathered from 317 manufacturing plants, with more than 100 workers, operating in 10 countries all over the world. Our results confirm the positive effects that PC practices have on both QC and CS. In addition, we observed that leadership practices moderate the relationship between PC and quality performance measures. Specifically, it seems that the SFC interacts with PC to improve CS; whereas, SIF can be an aid for PC to increase QC.