The Impact of Total Quality Management of Knowledge Management and Organizational Performance in Higher Education Institutions in Iraq

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Total Quality Management (TQM); Knowledge Management (KM) and Organizational Performance (OP) in Iraqi higher-education institutions (HEIs). TQM core elements included leadership commitment, strategic planning, continuous improvement, customer focus, process focus, employee involvement, training and learning, rewards and recognition, and management by fact. KM processes included knowledge identification, knowledge acquisition, knowledge storage, knowledge sharing, and knowledge application. Meanwhile, measures of organizational performance included students related academic achievement and non-students related academic achievement. Based on the theoretical framework, four main hypotheses were developed, and statistically tested. The study used cross-sectional survey methodology. The samples were drawn from Iraqi HEIs (public universities) using a stratified random sampling procedure based on the directory provided by the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Iraq (MHESR-I). The final number of respondents, involved in this study, was 174 colleges (faculties) within 24 public universities. The hypotheses of the study were tested by applying multivariate statistical data analyses. This study reported a significant relationship between TQM core elements and KM processes, between TQM core elements and OP measures, and between KM processes and OP measures. In brief, the results supported all the four main hypotheses, and provided evidence that both TQM core elements and KM processes should be implemented holistically, rather than piecemeal. In addition, the study found that the KM fully mediates the relationship between TQM and OP. The current study provided insight regarding the relationship between TQM, KM and OP. Hence, this study was able to expand the boundary of existing literature. Finally, the findings from this study provided empirical evidence that TQM has a significant and positive impact on KM, which in turn, significantly affect organizational performance.