International Journal of Tourism & Hospitality Reviews

Mukhles Al-Ababneh

School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Surrey

November, 2011

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Abstract

The current study sets out to explore the impact of the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) necessary for TQM implementation on organisational creativity in the hotel industry. Two questionnaires were used to test the study's models. The first questionnaire on TQM was designed to measure managers‘ perceptions of the CSFs of TQM, process innovation and product innovation. The second questionnaire on creativity, was designed to measure employees‘ perceptions of job attitudes (i.e. intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction and organisational commitment), work environment for creativity (i.e. stimulants and obstacles to creativity), and work outcomes (i.e. organisational creativity, service innovation performance and productivity). In addition, few short structured interviews were conducted to explore further the practices of quality management. Using cluster analysis on the CSFs of TQM resulted in two groups of hotels based on their level of TQM implementation: ‗low TQM adopters‘ and ‗high TQM adopters‘. These two groups showed significant differences across the study‘s variables. For instance, hotels with a high level of TQM implementation were also higher in employee attitudes, work environment for creativity, and work outcomes, while hotels with a low level of TQM implementation were lower in all the study‘s variables. This study used both regression analysis and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) to test hypotheses and proposed models. For the TQM model, the findings revealed that TQM had positive relationships with both process innovation and product innovation, and process innovation partially mediated the relationship between TQM and product innovation. In the second model, the creativity model, the stimulants to creativity had positive impacts on employee attitudes and work outcomes, while obstacles to creativity had negative impacts on dependent(s), and employee attitudes partially mediated these relationships. The study‘s findings showed that implementing successful TQM practices can help hotels to create an appropriate work environment for stimulating creativity and enhancing innovation.