Effects of selected total quality management practices and innovation perception about market competition of managers on product quality and innovation

Today when inter-enterprise competition is intense, it is of great importance to follow technological developments and enable enterprises to utilize every innovation explored, in order to maintain the competition. In the present day, there is a greater need for making more innovative moves using developments in different sectors, in order to assume a more productive and competitive structure. Today, innovation is of great importance for developing and developed countries. It is a key factor for the development of national economy and the increase of wealth level. Thus, all countries have to attach great importance to innovation and set international strategies for the development of innovation abilities. It is aimed to determine the current situation concerning on which factors the success or failure of enterprises operating in the furniture industry in Turkey regarding innovation depend; what factors affect the innovation accomplished and not accomplished by enterprises; and what kind of inadequacies are present. Also, it is aimed to create a model to contribute to the solution of inadequacies detected and to bring forward suggestions for the model. At this point, the study plans to clear in what way enterprises utilize Total Quality Applications (TQA) selected, whether the method or methods of these applications contribute to the product quality and innovation in enterprises and to determine whether they create a positive effect in innovation perceptions of administrators within the scope of market competition or not. In other words, it has been noticed that there is a decrease in innovative perception behaviors of administrators in enterprises and a profound analysis has been carried out to determine which of the Total Quality Applications selected has the greatest effect and advantage on changing and increasing this perception. It is aimed to reveal inadequacies of midsize furniture enterprises operating at the SME level in Turkey to perform innovations, generate solutions to these inadequacies and to create a model that would bring an innovation adequacy within the scope of market competition. It is also aimed to enable the aforementioned enterprises to know through which model they can make innovative moves more quickly within the scope of this model and to make scientific contributions to the economy of the developed/developing Turkish furniture sector. In addition, it is endeavored to determine an appropriate model for enterprises to survive successfully in challenging market competition conditions by helping them make more practical innovative moves and gain awareness. Within the frame of the genuine model that we have developed based on the literature for the administrators of enterprises in provinces where the furniture industry is advanced, 336 survey applications have been conducted and the data acquired have been analyzed via the SPSS statistics package software. Validity of the model has been evaluated via the Structural Equation Model (LISREL 8.54) software. Additionally, alternative probable intermediary variable models have been developed for the model established. According to the results of the analysis, it has been concluded that confirmatory factor analysis and all fit indices of the model are at an acceptable level. Besides, according to the result of the model established with intermediary variables; it has been determined that the effect of administrators' innovation perception on technology management / R&D variable and product quality and innovation is more significant than comparison, customer orientation and strategical plan variables and the perception shows a full intermediacy effect, in contrast to the partial intermediacy effect with other variables. Considering this result; we suggest that as long as midsize enterprises (SMEs) operating in the aforementioned furniture sector make technology management / R&D investments, they will experience no difficulty in market competition. Also, furniture administrators working in the middle management will be able to make innovations uneventfully.