TQM Practices in Manufacturing and Service Companies in Peru‪.‬

Introduction Total quality management (TQM) is a management philosophy, diffused all over the world, with the objective of improving the operative and business performance of the organizations, by offering a systemic approach to continually improve the operative activities to continually fulfill customers' requirements (Agus, 2005; Powell, 1995). The philosophy is particularly attractive because of the focus on quality, which offers the promise of improvement of an organization's performance. However, until 1993, only one third of the 500 largest companies in the United States declared having perceived benefits of TQM implementation (Ahire, Waller, & Golhar, 1996). The poor results could be relate to a bad design or to not taking into account certain variables that could be relevant for the success of this implementation (Tata & Prasad, 1998).