The impact of TQM on innovation in the construction industry a research agenda

Very few issues have seen as much agreement on their vital role to organisational effectiveness and competitiveness as innovation. Our understanding, however, of innovative behaviour in organisations remains relatively undeveloped (1,2). Things are definitely much less developed in the field of construction management. As Tornatzky & Fleisher (3) assert, innovation cannot be understood without careful attention to the personal, organisational, technological and environmental contexts within which it takes place. Consequently, there is a sharp and increasing need to study innovation in the context of construction industry, an industry characterised by its fragmentation, temporariness and high mobility, separation of design and production. This paper presents a research agenda to investigate the way in which Total Quality Management (TQM) as an innovative management tool, has been adopted by the British construction contractors and how it has affected innovation management in these organisations. It aims to explore how construction companies adopted TQM as an innovation, analyses the innovation phases of TQM from adoption to diffusion, and speculates whether TQM has helped organisation become more innovative.