RELATIONSHIPS AMONG TQM PRACTICES, ROLE CONFLICT, AND ROLE AMBIGUITY

摘要

This study examines the multidimensional and mediating relationships between six Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, role conflict and role ambiguity. The research model serves as a diagnostic tool for the organisational administrators to manage the individual employee stress behaviour by leveraging current TQM practices, and fine-tune the right characteristics to reduce undesirable role conflict and role ambiguity. The focus of the present study is to formulate, examine and establish a research model linking the multidimensional and mediating relationships between TQM practices, role conflict and role ambiguity. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows: First, the concepts of role theory, TQM practices, role conflict and role ambiguity are defined. A literature review concerning the relationships between six TQM practices, role conflict, and role ambiguity is also presented. In the next section, a research model is illustrated and followed by a discussion on the research methodology employed. Finally, the results are discussed and followed by theoretical and managerial implications, research limitations as well as conclusions of the study. The research findings in this study indicate that role conflict is found to have a significant and positive relationship with role ambiguity. This result is consistent with several past studies, in which these researchers have reported that role conflict has a significant and positive effect on role ambiguity. The result of this study implies that the greater the conflict an employee perceives in the role, the more ambiguity the individual employee will perceive. The present findings confirm that strategic planning is found to be significant in reducing the role ambiguity experienced by the employees. This result suggests that strategic planning is a structured process of setting the short and long term goals, and a people-interactive process which could facilitate the delivery of explicit and unambiguous assignments of roles and responsibilities among the employees. In this regard, the empirical finding of this study demonstrates that the dimension of strategic planning in TQM practices reduces role ambiguity experienced by the employees. In the present study, customer focus is reported to have a positive relationship with role ambiguity. The positive relationship between customer focus and role ambiguity may lie in the nature of the boundary spanning roles, in which employees span the boundary between the organisation and its customers. In this instance, these employees face more uncertainty in their search for the best way to perform their multiple roles, especially when they have to respond to different customer needs and complete job assigned by superiors simultaneously. From the results of this study, it is apparent that the dimension of customer focus in TQM practices increases role ambiguity experienced by the employees of ISO-certified organizations as they have to perform boundary spanning roles between the organization and customers. The present findings confirm that human resource focus is positively related to role conflict. This seems to be the case in this study because the practice of empowerment in ISO-certified firms, which rely on standardised rules and procedures, has increased role conflict experienced by the employees. On the other hand, human resource focus has an indirect effect on role ambiguity through role conflict. Since the reward and recognition systems in TQM-oriented organisations are often aligned to fit a TQM strategy, employees, who have work achievements but have been relatively inactive in TQM-based activities, are likely to be under-evaluated, resulting in higher levels of role conflict. In some instances, it can be difficult fitting in the extra training demands required of TQM which can be a source of role conflict (e.g., between production and development requirements). Training works best when it is arranged over time rather than in a short period. As a result, these increased conflicting roles and expectations aggravate more ambiguity among the employees about how to perform and prioritise the roles and expectations. The present study shows that process management is negatively related to role conflict. This is further supported by the notion that written rules and procedures on the employees' job proves helpful in reducing conflict among employees such as secretaries and clerical staff whose tasks are routine but the work environment is changing and uncertain with regard to workloads and scheduling. Furthermore, this present study develops a persuasive rationale that the link between process management and role ambiguity is mediated by role conflict. This finding indicates that formalised process management is needed in the work environment to reduce ambiguous authority structures, unclear objectives, and ambiguity in work roles by clarifying and defining job responsibilities. The result of this study also indicates that information analysis is significantly related to lower levels of role conflict. This shows that the firms in this present survey have adequacy of data and information analysis to facilitate decision-making and operation, which in turn, reduce the levels of employees' role conflict. In addition, role conflict is found to be a full mediator in the link between information analysis and role ambiguity. In this regard, the practice of information analysis in these ISO-certified organisations represents the adequacy of information that helps delineation of work role boundaries, resulting in lower levels of role ambiguity. Therefore, this finding indicates that this dimension of TQM (i.e., information analysis) is an important practice, and it is imperative that firms continue the efficient use of information analysis.