Investigating the linkage between total quality management and environmentally responsible manufacturing

This paper explicitly examines the relationship that exists between total q uality management (TQM) and environmentally responsible manufacturing (ERM) systems, It has been presumed in numerous past studies that such a relatio nship does exist. It has been argued that those firms that have successfull y implemented a TQM system are better positioned to successfully implement an ERM system, This relationship, however, has not yet been statistically a nd empirically evaluated. In this study, the authors evaluate this relation ship using a large-scale survey of plant managers as the data source and co nfirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling as the statisti cal tools, The study develops a series of measures for various aspects of b oth TQM and ERM, The results show that there is indeed a strong relationshi p between TQM and ERM, In many ways, ERM is conditioned by the presence of TQM, Furthermore, ERM systems have a parallel structure when compared to TQ M systems.