Social Networks and Maintaining Service Quality in a Total Quality Management (TQM) Context: The Case of a Sri Lankan Service Sector Organization

Abstract

This paper presents a study on the influence of social networks among employees over service quality of an organization in Sri Lanka. The most effective quality management approach is considered to be Total Quality Management (TQM), which is all about managing quality with the participation of everybody of the organization. TQM studies pay attention on how employees voluntarily participate in accomplishing work but not on how they collectively behave towards quality. Social network studies capture such collective behaviors. Tendency to study implications of social networks among people is increasing. This study focuses on how social networks among operating employees influence service quality outcomes. This investigation was carried out from theoretical lenses of Organizational Role Theory (ORT) adopting the phenomenological tradition and by way of an instrumental case study. Interviews with managers and operational workers were the main sources of data. The research field was a leading automobile service provider in Sri Lanka having its mother company in Japan. The mother company is famous for introducing various TQM initiatives to the world. TQM practices and informal social networks are found in operation of this company creating quality implications. Findings were analyzed using ORT and reveal that social networks produce positive implications towards quality maintenance when a TQM environment exists. This research produces two outcomes with; (i) an extension to ORT theory and (ii) a message to the quality management practice.