The Effect of TQM on firm Performance: Empirical Study in Jordanian Private Airlines

The purpose of this study was to explre the relationship between total quality management and firm performance, i.e. quality, business and organizational performance in Jordanian private airlines. The design of this study has a quantitative approach. Data was obtained by questionnaire instrument. The respondents of this study are all employees in quality department, maintenance department, human resource department, and operation department. The number of population was 480 employees. Random sampling was used in the study. 340 completed questionnaires were analyzed as a final sample. Three hypotheses have been developed through literature review and tested using descriptive statistical analysis performed by SPSS. The results show that total quality management practices have a positive and significant impact on business, quality, and organizational performance in Jordanian private airlines. The study reports that effective implementation of total quality management practices results in enhancing airline performance. The major limitation of this study is that the study asked for perceived data about actual TQM practices and performance measures, but the respondents might have given desired data, which made their companies sound good, most of the respondents were non managers and from different departments in addition to the quality department, who might not understand to answer the questions accurately. Another limitation was that business performance tenets were measured by using one question per each tenet. Future research may investigate those TQM practices and performance measures in another Jordanian industry.