Organizational Culture and Quality Improvement: Differences Across Continents

Previous research shows that organizational factors influence quality improvement programs, and when there is a fit, it is leading to better business performances. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is an analysis of interdependence between organizational culture and quality improvement via testing the differences between dimensions and types of organizational cultures and applied procedures for quality improvement techniques on companies from 32 countries worldwide. Following detailed exploration of the available literature, data collection is conducted on 200 production enterprises in multinational supply chain. Upon this, further statistical examination is conducted by comparison of the companies in dependence of its locations continents. Results show that there are significant differences on dimensions of organizational culture and applied quality improvement procedures depending of geographical location of companies. Accordingly, results of this paper prove that contextual approach promoted in ISO 9001:2015 has to be applied and organizations that operate in different countries and continents must decide how much to localize their organizational culture and related management practices to fit within the host country context.


INTRODUCTION
In scientific and professional literature there exist few studies which consider subject of interaction of the organizational culture and quality improvement. In the recent years this topic gains more interest following the search for reasons of pitfalls of the large number of quality improvement initiatives. Using simple analysis and following tracks where initiatives come across insurmountable obstacles, leads to definition of organizational cultures and their influence on conducting and reasoning of workers on the places where quality improvement have essential role. Although this field is still is insufficiently researched, influence of organizational culture on selection of the adequate programs for quality improvement is notably significant and there exists important interdependence.
Resulting behavior of the employees is guided by organizational culture and it is a main prerequisite for continuous and systematic quality improvement that include all employees in the company [3,4,7,16,27]. Hence, organizational culture has strong influence on the essential dimension representing basis of every initiative for quality improvement, and therefore must be supported and guided from top executives and CEO's in the company [6,9,10,23,24] with a goal of advancement of the companies' business performances [25].
Accordingly, organizational culture should be compatible with quality improvement programs in the way that supports them [18,22,26]. This leads to the need for additional detailed exploration of the interdependence between dimensions defining organizational culture and quality improvement, since differences between nationalities and their culture and quality improvement additionally raise questions about contextual dependence on the choice of the adequate programs for quality improvement. Also, nowadays, competition has moved from the scale of single companies to the supply chain level and the supply chain members act as "partners" that have to satisfy customers all over the world.
In that context this paper first presents review of existing research in this field, following by an analysis of dimensions of the organizational culture and quality improvement on the sample of 200 companies from 32 countries which are part of supply chain of the large international company. Analysis of two different concepts was conducted and they are compared depending of geographical location of the companies, i.e. of the continent where company is redistricted.

REVIEW OF THE EXISTING EMPIRICAL RESE-ARCHES IN THE FIELD OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT
In Table 1 the most important empirical researches in the field of influence of the organizational culture on quality management are presented. Based on analyzed literature review and realized empirical research, it can be concluded that organizational culture has significant, but not enough explored impact on quality improvement processes.

RESEARCH OF THE ORGANIZATIONAL CUL-TURE AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN COMPA-NIES THAT BELONG TO A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY SUPPLY CHAIN
Empirical research presented in this paper includes all production enterprises and the most important company's suppliers and partners, dispersed on six continents (North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa). Using survey method, an empirical research is conducted on the sample of 200 enterprises, where more than 10000 data about explored variables.
In order to collect needed data for this study, discrete, five-point Likert scale, with end points of "strongly disagree (=1)" and "strongly agree (=5)", with middle of the scale representing neutral answer to measure that construct, was used. The respondents needed to mark value of their levels of agreement or disagreement with statement regarding the application of organizational culture dimensions, quality improvement tool or methodology, as well as business performance indicators. According to general recommendations [16], 25% of question in this survey were recorded and placed in reversed order, for avoiding errors of respondents. To improve survey, five experts and specialists, including university professors and industry professionals were consulted at preliminary phase. Several items in the initial questionnaire were revised as a result of their comments and inputs. The survey was emailed to 500 companies that are parts or subcontractors of the examined large multinational company supply chain.
Responses were received from 200 companies and from 32 different countries widespread on 6 continents.
Descriptive statistic of the researched variables is shown in Table 2.
Correlation analysis of examined variables leads to the following conclusions: 1. Risk management is positively correlated with organizational goals i.e. tasks, formalization level, reward system, conflict management, knowledge and competitiveness. Also, risk management is negatively correlated with the control system. Looking at quality improvement factors, risk management is correlated with all of them except quality techniques and preventive measures. It is also correlated with quality performance and customer satisfaction.
2. Organizational structure is not correlated with conflict management, regarding organizational culture dimension. Also there is no correlation with any of the quality factors as well as with business performances.
3. The speed of organizational reactions is not correlated with any dimension of organizational culture, with any of quality factors as well as with any of business performances. It is interesting to observe that existing correlations are mostly negative. 4. Communication in organization is correlated with organizational goals/objectives, level of formalization, rewarding system and with progress and development.
Regarding factors of quality improvement, risk management is correlated with all factors (variables) except quality techniques and preventive measures. Communi-cation in organization is also correlated with marketing and financial performances, performances of employees, quality characteristics and customer satisfaction.
5. Organizational goals/objectives are correlated with level of formalization, reward system, knowledge and competitiveness and with progress and development. Organizational goals/objectives are also in negative correlation with control system. Regarding quality improvement dimension, organizational goals/objectives are in correlation with all factors from quality improvement pool and also with all business performances.
6. The level of formalization is correlated to the reward system, conflict management, with knowledge and competitiveness, as well as with progress and development. Negative correlation exists in case of control system. As for quality improvement dimensions level of formalization is in correlation with all factors of quality improvement as well as with all business performances. 7. Reward system is in correlation with conflict management, knowledge and competitiveness, as well as with progress and development. Negative correlations exist with control system. Reward system is also correlated with all factors for quality improvement and with business performances. 8. Control system, apart from the mentioned negative correlations with risk management, organizational goals/objectives and reward system is not correlated with any other dimension of organizational culture. Negative correlations exist between control system with basic and advanced quality tools, PDCA, TQM and LEAN methodologies, as well as with corrective actions for quality management variables. Regarding the business performance, there are no correlations between them and control system. 9. Conflict management apart mentioned correlation is not correlated with the rest of organizational dimension variables. Regarding quality improvement dimension, conflict management is correlated with almost all factors except basic quality tools, PDCA and preventive actions. It is also correlated with market/financial performances and employee, quality and customer satisfaction performances.
10. Knowledge and competitiveness apart above mentioned correlations is also correlated with progress and development in from the organizational culture variables. It is also correlated with all factors from quality improvement dimension, and all business performances factors except investing and development variable.
11. Progress and development dimensions are correlated only with mentioned variables for organizational dimensions. Regarding quality improvement dimension factors progress and development is correlated with all of them. Also it is in correlation with all business performances except investment/development variable.
12. Primary focus of organization is not correlated with any dimension of organizational culture, neither with any factor of quality improvement dimension or business performances.
13. All factors regarding quality improvement dimensions are mutually correlated.

COMPARISON OF ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND QUALITY IMPROVEMENT IN COMPANIES THAT BELONG TO A MULTINATIONAL COMPANY SUPPLY CHAIN (GEOGRAPHICALLY DISPERSED COMPANIES)
In order to compare organizational culture and quality improvement practice in the multinational corporation depending on geographical location of its organizational parts (depending of locations by continents) adequate system of hypothesis is introduced. Geographical location of organizations within multinational supply chain in 32 countries and 6 continents is shown at Figure 1. :   Since p value is 0, null hypothesis cannot be accepted, i.e. there are highly significant differences between quality tools, techniques, methodologies and application in quality improvement that are in use depending of continent of company, for level of significance p<0.001.

CONCLUSION
This paper analyses differences between dimensions of organizational culture and procedures for quality improvement on the sample of 200 companies from 32 countries dispersed worldwide, as a part of multinational corporation supply chain. After detailed review of existing literature, dimensions of organizational culture and quality improvement were analyzed on a large sample of data, to check the differences in organizational culture and quality management practice depending of continent where companies are registered.
Results of conducted empirical research indicate the fact that apart from significant correlation between characteristics of organizational culture and application of procedures for quality improvement, there exist significant differences in both culture and quality management practices depending on the continent where companies are registered. Using analysis of variance and following hypothesis testing there are shown statistically highly significant differences (p<0.001) between average values of organizational culture and quality improvement practices depending on the company location, i.e. continent.