Total quality management (TQM), organizational characteristics and competitive advantage

We investigate two issues. The first is to determine the impact of TQM dimensions of a medical care system (quality system, quality leadership, medical and sanitary staff, relationship with patient, relationships with suppliers, and continuous improvement) on the hospital competitive advantage (innovation, competitive benchmarking) in sample Jordanian hospitals. The second is to explore the moderating effect of two basic organizational characteristics: the size and the age of a hospital, on the relationship between TQM dimensions and competitive advantage. Our finding indicates that five TQM dimensions (QS, QL, RP, RS, and CI) have a positive impact on hospital innovation and reputation. This result is compatible with the main findings of many previous field studies. (Prajogo and suhal, 2003; Hung et al., 2010; Abrunhosa and Sa, 2008; Bon and Mustafa, 2013, Silva et al., 2014). This result could be attributed to a continuous improvement of hospital services quality (the sixth of the main dimensions of TQM). Continuous improvement (CI) is synonymous to innovation because both imply changes and modifications to health service.