Orientation–capability matching in quality management: A two-stage fsQCA of Korean manufacturing SMEs

Firms implementing similar quality-management systems obtain markedly different competitive returns. This study asks why, proposing that quality practices reach competitive advantage indirectly, by constructing operational capabilities and by accompanying those capabilities with an orientation suited to their demands. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis is applied to survey data from 131 Korean exporting SMEs in two stages. The first relates six quality practices to product development and manufacturing capability. The second relates the two quality orientations, together with the two capabilities, to competitive advantage. Control-oriented information management recurs across every primary intermediate configuration sufficient for capability formation, while the accompanying practices vary. At the conversion stage, no quality orientation is sufficient on its own: every sufficient pathway contains an operational capability. Within this pattern, learning-oriented quality management is recurrently coupled with product development capability, and control-oriented quality management participates prominently in manufacturing-based routes. Comparisons with models representing quality management as aggregate intensity, as ambidexterity, and as balance show that these representations reproduce the general association while concealing the orientation-specific routes. The study reframes quality management as a capability-building and capability-directing system rather than as a quantity to be maximized or balanced.