조선기자재산업에서 품질전략과 전략적 통제시스템의 특성이 기업성과에 미치는 영향에 관한 실증연구

Abstract

The quality of Product is one of the major decision variables a customer has when choosing which product to purchase. With the increase in local and global competition, higher quality standards are required to remain competitive in a global market. Because of this fact, shipbuilding and marine equipment corporations are very interested in upgrading the quality of products, services and industries by adopting of quality strategies and TQM(Total Quality Management) principles, which enables these industries to produce a product with high quality at minimum cost.

A Globalized market and enforced competition have prompted shipbuilding and marine equipment industries to radically change their control systems, or at least consider doing so, in an effort maintain financial viability. One of the major strategic changes is emphasis on quality and adoption of quality strategies. However, many companies have not attained their expected economic benefits after implementing quality strategies. Many accounting researchers indicate that these failures are partly due to continuous reliance on traditional control systems. Different quality strategies require different control systems. But in fact, there are many companies in the Korean marine equipment industry that simultaneously use quality strategies, and strategic control systems in their manufacturing processes today.

Therefore, the major purpose of this study is to examine the impacts of the attributes of quality strategies and strategic control systems on business performance in marine equipment industry. Traditional managers think that improved quality leads to increasing costs and decreasing productivity, and that success will be achieved only by increasing sales. They also think that quality control works only by actual inspection of the completed product. After development of the quality control concept, managers concentrate on prevention control during design periods and the first stages of the production process in order to minimize the percentage of defective products. This means that the quality concept has developed over the last twenty years to become a broad management tool as opposed to its initial role of control. The practical application of TQM leads to decreasing the average operation costs and other expenses, which automatically increases profits. The previous studies subdivide quality strategies into the ECL(Economic Conformance Level) strategy and ZD (Zero Defects) strategy. The ECL strategy proposes a cost minimizing quality level can be achieved by balancing prevention and appraisal costs against internal and external failure costs. The ZD strategy proposes that increasing quality level is always less costly per unit of good output up to a ZD level.

Many researchers agree to improve performance by implementing a ZD strategy together with control systems which are fitted with a ZD strategy.

TQM as a total strategic control system means the total management system that implements a management philosophy of customer satisfaction through continuous improvement and innovational thoughts. This is accomplished with top-management's leadership and employees' involvement that implements a policy of quality management, customer focus, development of human resources, empowered work forces, and supplier relationships. Some countries promote their own improved quality level and make efforts to raise the worldwide competitiveness of products. And also companies make a steady effort to acquire international quality certification. The most recognized international certified quality standards are the ISO 9000 series, Deming Prize, and Malcolm Baldrige Award. The most recognized and used TQM programs are QC, ZD and 6 Sigma.

This is an empirical study on the impacts of the attributes of quality strategies and strategic control systems on business performance in marine equipment industry and the purpose of this study is as follows:

First, re-illustrating the present internal/external states and roles of Korean marine equipment industry.

Second, clarifying the conceptual thoughts about quality and TQM, and identifying the relationships among the quality strategies, the strategic control system and the business performance.

Third, building the integrated model in functional or process activity aspects through the system approach.

Fourth, through the empirical study, analyzing the impacts of the attributes of quality strategies and strategic control systems on business performance.

The critical factors of quality strategies include ECL strategy and ZD strategy. Strategic control systems based on TQM include strategy implementation practices, internal monitoring practices and external monitoring practices. I evaluated business performance using the self-reported perceptions on quality and customer satisfactions growth.

The data investigating the impacts of the attributes of quality strategies and strategic control systems on business performance in marine equipment industry were collected from 170 Korean marine equipment firms which officially registered in Korea Marine Equipment Association by use of questionnaire method and personal interviews at the selected samples. The reliability test, validity test, T-test, factor analysis, cluster analysis by SPSS 7.5 and SEM(Structural Equation Modeling) analysis by AMOS 5.0(2003) were utilized to analyze the data for three research hypotheses.

The major research findings from the study are as follows

First research question concerns the difference in business performance between the companies that have implemented a ZD strategy and the companies that have implemented an ECL strategy. The companies of that have implemented a ZD strategy are expected to outperform an ECL

strategy.

However, the performance does not significantly differ even if there is a little difference on the customer performance. Therefore this result implies that implementing a ZD strategy does not help improve business performance.

Second research question concerns the difference in strategic control systems between the companies that have implemented a ZD strategy and the companies that have implemented an ECL strategy. It is expected that each strategic control system will be different because the ZD and ECL strategies require different behavior of operating personnel. This hypothesis was supported conclusively. Therefore, the control system fitted with a ZD strategy is different from that fitted with an ECL strategy.

Third research question concerns that attributes of strategic control systems are associated with improvement in quality strategies and business performance. I address this question using SEM analysis by AMOS 5.0(2003). According to the results, the strategic control systems strongly impact on quality strategies and business performance. Especially companies implementing a ZD strategy with strategic control system outperformed an ECL strategy with its strategic control system.

In conclusion it is fair to say that the results of these statistical tests verify that an existing strategic control system based on TQM in Korean marine equipment industry is effective for the business performance even if the control system is inconsistent with the quality strategy which is limited to production.

The findings of this study suggest further empirical research focusing different department (for example, design department) to clarify the relationship between quality strategy, TQM and business performance.