A Bibliometric View On The Use of Total Quality Management in Services

Total Quality Management & Business Excellence
ISSN: 1478-3363 (Print) 1478-3371 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctqm20
A bibliometric view on the use of total quality

management in services
Chen Zhang, Maria R.A. Moreira & Paulo S.A. Sousa
To cite this article: Chen Zhang, Maria R.A. Moreira & Paulo S.A. Sousa (2020): A bibliometric
view on the use of total quality management in services, Total Quality Management & Business
Excellence, DOI: 10.1080/14783363.2020.1732811
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2020.1732811
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Total Quality Management, 2020
https://doi.org/10.1080/14783363.2020.1732811
A bibliometric view on the use of total quality management in services

Chen Zhanga, Maria R.A. Moreira a,b*
and Paulo S.A. Sousa a
a
Faculty of Economics, Universidade do Porto, Porto, Portugal; bINESC TEC, Porto, Portugal
This research aims to highlight the major domains of and address the most prominent
topics in the Total Quality Management (TQM) field in the service sector. Although
there are numerous studies related to TQM, systematic quantitative reviews on TQM
in services are scarce. The objective of this paper is to present a thorough analysis of
the current mostly discussed issues related to the use of TQM in services by
conducting a bibliometric analysis of the extant literature on TQM collected from
Web of Science and Scopus databases. The findings indicate that TQM
implementation is not a fading topic. The studies in the field of ‘TQM use in
services’ are growing and becoming more intensive. TQM-related practices are
gaining more attention while the TQM implementation framework is still under
development. Healthcare is the most researched industry. Top management
commitment/leadership is a critical construct and managers should be aware of the
obstacle caused by lacking it. TQM professionals and managers in the service sector
can benefit from this paper by having a sketch of the latest and most prominent
academic findings and thus gaining insights on techniques that fit into TQM
implementation. For academic professionals, several research avenues are pointed out.
Keywords: total quality management; TQM; bibliometric; co-citation; co-word
1. Introduction
Quality has been the concern of manufacturers for a long time (Aquilani, Silvestri,
Ruggieri, & Gatti, 2017). After the success of Japanese companies in global competition,
American manufacturers recognised the need for improving quality (Cusumano & Takeishi,
1991). Some pioneers, such as W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran and Philip Crosby,
developed philosophies, practices and tools to overcome the obstacles caused by quality
problems (Suarez, 1992). The emergence of TQM extended the scope of quality and pro-
vided the direction for current trends in quality management. Quality improvement requires
participation of all members of the organisation (Sadikoglu & Zehir, 2010). By definition, it
is a people-oriented management system that aims to continual improvement in customer
satisfaction at continually lower real cost.
For businesses and companies, it is common sense that quality is crucial for survival and
success. However, many organisations simply do not realise that the root of some manage-
ment problems is quality-related, or, at least, originates at the incorrect implementation of
quality approaches. Thus, there are significant gaps between executives’ understanding of
quality improvement and the implementation of it (Talib & Rahman, 2015).
Modern quality management began in the manufacturing sector. The service sector
began to recognise the important role of quality after the manufacturing sector, and the
maturity degree of TQM in services is lower than in manufacturing (Dale, Barber, Williams,
& Van Der Wiele, 1997). The principles of quality that apply to manufactured products
*Corresponding author. Email: mrosario@fep.up.pt
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

2 C. Zhang et al.
equally apply to services. But due to the different nature of the two sectors, there are differ-
ences in total quality management of services and that of manufacturing (Huq & Stolen,
1998).
Practical implementation of quality management is arousing more and more concern,
and there are numerous studies related to TQM (Aquilani et al., 2017). Thus, it is valuable
to identify the hot topics regarding TQM in addition to the trends, gaps and weaknesses in
this field, and provide TQM professionals and managers in the service industry with some
insights or techniques that fit its practical implementation. Consequently, the main aim of
this work is to conduct a systematic review on TQM use in services by means of a biblio-
metric study. Bibliometric analysis enables an objective investigation of a body of literature
to identify knowledge structure and research front (Okubo, 1997). In fact, traditional litera-
ture reviews are more prone to subjective bias, as, if the topic under study is composed of a
vast number of references, the researcher, to have a humanly manageable set of references
to work with, has necessarily to filter out many publications by a criterium that cannot be
exempt of subjectivity. By contrast, bibliometrics, by being based on counting procedures
that only use bibliographic records and that do not need the complete reading of each pub-
lication, can incorporate all references belonging to a topic. Moreover, many bibliometric
methods can be automated on computers, which broadens even more the vastness of refer-
ences that can tackle. Comparing to the traditional literature reviews, bibliometrics may lose
in analytic detail, but it wins in comprehensiveness. Therefore, the two approaches are not
rival but complementary.
This research is the first attempt to perform a bibliometric analysis on the topic of TQM
implementation in the general service sector, shedding some light on the most significant
topics in TQM, the popular trends of recent TQM research and the potential drawbacks.
The research questions are: (1) What are the most salient themes in implementing Total
Quality Management in major services sectors? (2) What are the trends, gaps and weak-
nesses in this field?
Similar studies are either bibliometric analyses on quality-related topics but not on
TQM neither in services (e.g. Gonzalez Aleu & Van Aken, 2017; Hussain, Eskildsen, &
Edgeman, 2018; Lizarelli, Bessi, Oprime, Do Amaral, & Chakraborti, 2016; Veiga,
Mendes, & Lourenço, 2016), or non-bibliometric analysis (but systematic literature
reviews) on TQM implementation in services (e.g. Ahire, Landeros, & Golhar, 1995; Aqui-
lani et al., 2017; Hietschold , Reinhardt, & Gurtner, 2014; Mosadeghrad, 2014; Sila & Ebra-
himpour, 2002; Talib, Rahman, & Azam, 2011).
The paper is organised as follows. The next section presents a literature review regard-
ing quality management and services. Then the methodological considerations are pre-
sented, followed by the presentation and discussion of results. The conclusion, the
discussion of limitations and suggestion for future research close the paper.
2. Literature review
2.1. Total quality management
During the 1970s, Japanese products of high quality quickly penetrated the Western
markets, thus shocking American companies (Yong & Wilkinson, 2002). Under the
increasing pressure from both competitors and customers with higher expectations, man-
agers began to take quality seriously to ensure the survival of their business. Corporate-
wide extensive quality improvement was conducted and commitment of top management
to quality was renewed (Yong & Wilkinson, 2002). From the 1980s and through the
mid-1990s, manufacturing companies experienced a significant upsurge in effort and
Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 3
investment in quality improvement, and, later, a similar expansion emerged in the service
sector and non-profit organisations (Prajogo, 2005).
It is noticeable that during the last thirty years of the twentieth century, the trend of shift-
ing focus from product quality to Total Quality Management played important role in the
development of quality management (Boaden, 1997). The contemporary TQM literature
originated from those educational works of quality management pioneers like Deming,
Juran and Crosby, but there are many different definitions of TQM (Sila & Ebrahimpour,
2003). In the literature, TQM is classified as a philosophy, as an approach or a concept,
or in other ways. Most definitions enclose customer focus and continuous improvement.
From the 1990s, popular press and academic journals have published a large number of
studies investigating both successful and unsuccessful implementation of TQM (Kaynak,
2003). According to Yong and Wilkinson (2002), there was a growing concern on the
field of TQM and its influence on organisational effectiveness.
TQM was originally developed mainly in and for manufacturing, but it has also been
implemented in administrative processes, and, from that, many services have begun to
apply some TQM practices (philosophical orientations and common core values about
people, organisations, and change processes in TQM literature) (Mohrman, Tenkasi,
Lawler, & Ledford, 1995).
Business has realised that quality must not be viewed solely as a technical discipline,
but as a discipline within management. That is say, quality issues permeate all aspects of
business, and the ‘quality of management’ is as important as ‘management of quality’
(Evans & Lindsay, 2013).
TQM requires specific tools and techniques to improve products, services, and business
processes (Partlow, 1996). However, in the same way a widely accepted definition of TQM
is inexistent, a standard widespread implementation framework for TQM does not exist as
well (Sila & Ebrahimpour, 2003).
Hackman and Wageman (1995) summarise that TQM conceptual authorities (Juran,
Ishikawa and Deming) propose four principles that should be followed by organisations
to conduct quality improvement: (1) focus on work processes, (2) analysis of variability,
(3) management by fact and (4) learning and continuous improvement. Meanwhile, there
are similar philosophical orientations and common core values about people, organisations,
and change processes in TQM literature. The interventions prescribed by conceptual auth-
orities to achieve those values are summarised by Hackman and Wageman (1995) as five
practices.
The effectiveness of TQM principles hinges on the successful implementation in the
organisation. In practice, however, the outcome of TQM is not achieved easily because
the implementation is a complicated and tough process (Rad, 2006).
Many reasons have been given for the failure of TQM. According to Talib and Rahman
(2015), barriers often hindered the proper implementation of TQM and have negatively
affected the desired outcomes. As a result, many TQM initiatives have been abandoned,
ignored or declared a failure. Aquilani et al. (2017) point out that a widely accepted or
shared model for TQM implementation does not yet exist. Moreover, there are also some
authors (e.g. Chiarini, 2011, 2013) who claim that TQM has been overwhelmed by Six
Sigma.
According to Calabrese and Corbò (2015), in general, there are five critical factors that
hinder TQM implementation. The first one is lack of leadership and top management
support for quality (Sebastianelli & Tamimi, 2003). This is because strategic plans for
quality are not suitable, leadership development is lagging, control systems which enable
the implementation of TQM programmes are absent and the attention to processes and
4 C. Zhang et al.
employee involvement is insufficient. The second one is human resource management

being inconsistent with TQM principles. This is caused by lack of employee empowerment,
lack of communication and cooperation and lack of employees’ training on TQM. The third
one is short customer focus, the fourth is inadequate planning for quality and the fifth is lack
of systems or resources for supporting TQM programmes (Sebastianelli & Tamimi, 2003).
Furthermore, the difficulties of implementing TQM are even higher in the service indus-
try because of its singular characteristics (Ennis & Harrington, 1999), as we are going to
point out in the next section. The barriers can also be classified into three categories in
terms of people-oriented issues, managerial issues and organisational issues (Talib &
Rahman, 2015).
2.2. Services
Although there are some similar processes in services and manufacturing and they both aim
to achieve operational and financial success (Zhou, Park, & Yi, 2009), the differences
between production of services and manufacturing are obvious, and have important impli-
cations on quality management (Huq & Stolen, 1998).
The service industry can be divided into trade, transportation and utilities; information;
finance; professional and business services; education and health services; leisure and hos-
pitality; and other services. In order to classify these industries, Schmenner (1986) proposes
a service process matrix, in which two key elements are used to classify service delivery
processes: labour intensity, and customer interaction.
Marketing theorists generally propose distinct features of services. The most frequently
cited characteristics were intangibility (Berry, 1980), inseparability (Cowell, 1988), hetero-
geneity, and perishability (Zeithaml, Parasuraman, & Berry, 1985). Among them, most ser-
vices exhibit at least two of these features (Burton, Cross, & Chapman, 1999).
Generally speaking, services are more labour intensive while manufacturing is more
capital intensive (Sengupta, Heiser, & Cook, 2006). The production of services typically
requires a higher degree of customisation than manufacturing, and customers often partici-
pate in the service process. Furthermore, customer needs and performance standards are
often different since customers are different (Ellram, Tate, & Billington, 2004; Huq &
Stolen, 1998). The service firm, with its highly customised output, must approach
quality differently, which brings about difficulties in achieving consistently high quality
and measuring and monitoring service quality (Huq & Stolen, 1998; Zeithaml, Berry, &
Parasuraman, 1996). Because of these difficulties, employees in service companies have
to engage in judgment at individual-level much more than in manufacturing companies
(Huq & Stolen, 1998).
3. Methodology
3.1. The bibliometric study
Pritchard (1969) indicates that bibliometrics can be defined as the mathematical and statisti-
cal analysis of bibliographic records. And, according to Osareh (1996) and Okubo (1997),
bibliometrics is an analysis tool which entails specific measurements aiming to quantify the
scientific and technological production data through article and/or patent publications.
Compared to narrative systematic literature review, which is never free from bias by the
authors (Minkman, Ahaus, & Huijsman, 2007; Tranfield, Denyer, & Smart, 2003), biblio-
metric approaches have a main advantage in introducing quantitative rigour into the subjec-
tive analysis of literature (Zupic & Cater, 2015). By employing a quantitative approach for
the description, evaluation, and monitoring of publications, it is possible to conduct a clear,

systematic, and reproducible review process thus improving the quality of reviews. In this
sense, bibliometric methods can be regarded as a helpful assistant to literature reviews since
they can guide researchers to the most influential works and map the research field while
avoiding subjective bias (Zupic & Cater, 2015).
According to Cobo, López-Herrera, Herrera-Viedma, and Herrera (2011), there are two
main uses of bibliometric methods: performance analysis (evaluative bibliometrics), which
aims to assess the research and publication performance of individuals and institutions; and
science mapping (relational bibliometrics), which attempts to reveal the structure and evol-
ution of a scientific field (Thelwall, 2008; Zupic & Cater, 2015). Our study aims at devel-
oping a science mapping, allowing to understand the conceptual, social and intellectual
structure of the research field of TQM implementation in services.
Five steps were followed to conduct the bibliometric approach (Zupic & Cater, 2015):
Research Design; Assembling Bibliometric Data; Analysis; Visualization and Interpretation.
3.2. Research Design

The research questions are as follows:
(1) What are the most salient themes in implementing Total Quality Management in
major services sectors?
(2) What are the trends, gaps and weaknesses in this field?
Three major techniques were used in this study. Similarly with Lizarelli et al. (2016)
and Veiga et al. (2016), the first is publication counting and abstract analysis, which
allowed answering research question 1 – the most salient themes in implementing TQM
in service sectors. The second one is co-citation analysis, which allowed answering research
question 2 by identifying intellectual structure and the research front of the research field
(Lizarelli et al. (2016) and Veiga et al. (2016) also employed co-citation analysis for the
same objective). The last one, co-word analysis helped to answer both research question
1 and 2, because it allowed finding the network of themes and tracking the evolution of
the TQM concept (in line with Lizarelli et al. (2016), Veiga et al. (2016) and Gonzalez
Aleu and Van Aken (2017)). A synthesis of the techniques is included in Table 1.
3.3. Application of bibliometric techniques

3.3.1. Assembling bibliometric data
The next step of the bibliometric study is to compile the bibliographic data, including
selecting the appropriate database, and filtering and exporting the documents’ bibliographic
data. The chosen databases are Elsevier’s Scopus and Thompson Reuters’ Web of Science
(WoS). These two databases are good tools for bibliometric studies and evaluations of
scientific productions.
Scopus was the first research platform we used. Scopus is recommended by some
researchers as having a wider coverage than the WoS (Zupic & Cater, 2015). Moreover,
as the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature (Elsevier, 2017),
Scopus provides data for all authors in cited references, improving the precision of
author-based citation and co-citation analysis (Zupic & Cater, 2015).
WoS, as one of the world’s largest citation indexes, is another popular tool for searching
extensive citation and conducting bibliometric analysis. It has general, cited reference and
6 C. Zhang et al.
Table 1. Bibliometric techniques and research questions.

Research Question(s)
Techniques Description Can Be Answered Function
Publication A quantitative and RQ 1: What are the . Evaluate and compare
counting and qualitative indicator of most salient themes the research
abstract the productivity of a in implementing performance of
analysis field of study in terms of TQM in services individual researchers,
the output delivered in sectors? departments, and
academic publications research institutions
and nations
Co-citation Connecting documents, RQ 2: What are the . Represent a link
analysis authors, or journals trends, gaps and between documents
based on the joint weaknesses in this . Identify the knowledge
appearances in field? base of a research field
reference list and its intellectual
structure
Co-word Using the words in RQ 1: What are the . Find the network of
analysis documents to establish most salient themes themes and their
relationships and build in implementing connections that
a conceptual structure TQM in services represent the
of the domain. sectors? conceptual space of a
RQ 2: What are the field.
trends, gaps and . Track the evolution of
weaknesses in this concept X
field?
advanced search features, with an extensive range of tools with which to manipulate search
results (ClarivateAnalytics, 2017). However, the study of Meho and Yang (2007) demon-
strates that though WoS remains an important citation database, it may be necessary to
additionally use Scopus for locating citations to an author or title, and, by extension, journals,
departments, and countries. The two databases complement rather than substitute each other.
The search was performed by using a combination of defined keywords (Table 2). The
main keywords were always combined with secondary keywords and tertiary keywords.
The keywords were used to search on ‘Title, abstracts and keywords’ both in WoS and
in Scopus. In WoS, the searching database was set as ‘All databases’.
The searching procedure resulted in 2,736 records from Scopus and 1,539 records from
WoS. After eliminating the duplications, we obtained 3,774 articles, which were retrieved
on January, 2018.
The next step was abstract analysis and publication counting. The first task was to
screen the records by reading the title and abstract and classifying the articles into four
categories:
Table 2. Keywords Combined within Search

Main Keywords Secondary Keywords Tertiary Keywords
. Total Quality Management . Services . Implementation
. TQM . Service Sectors . Application
. Service Industries . Introduction
. Service Firms
. Service Companies
. ‘Yes’ – the topic of the journal article is related to TQM implementation in services;
. ‘Not sure’ – the topic of the journal article is probably related to TQM implemen-
tation in services. It means that further reading is needed (i.e. the full text of the
paper);
. ‘No’ – it is not a journal article or the topic of the journal article is surely not in the
scope of this study;
. ‘Not applicable’ – the language of the text is not English.
The 3,450 articles in the ‘No’ category and the 17 articles in ‘Not applicable’ category
were removed from the list. The reasons for excluding such large number of articles classi-
fied in the ‘No’ category are ‘not analysing TQM implementation’ and ‘analysing TQM
implementation in non-service sectors, e.g. manufacturing’. Thus, we were left with 258
articles in the ‘Yes’ category and 52 articles in the ‘Not sure’ category. After analysing
their introduction and conclusion and reading the full text, 16 articles in the ‘Not sure’ cat-
egory were recategorized as ‘Yes’ and the others were removed from the list. It is worth
noting that despite the effort made, it was impossible to access the full text of 6 articles
whose abstracts are not enlightening to summarise the topic. Thus, they were also excluded
from the list. After the screening process, we obtained the final database of 268 articles.
3.3.2. Analysis: publication counting and abstract analysis

After obtaining the database, the publication information was exported and the topic of each
article was analysed. Careful reading of abstract or full text of each article was necessary in
order to fill in a table containing the following dimensions: topic, researched geographic
area, researched industry, discussed TQM Practices, discussed TQM CSFs (critical
success factors), and discussed TQM implementation issues/challenges (dimensions con-
sidered by several authors, e.g. Aquilani et al. (2017), Hietschold et al. (2014) and Mosa-
deghrad (2014)). TQM CSFs are elements that have a huge impact on the success of TQM.
E.g. Hietschold et al. (2014) classified the CSF into 11 distinct dimensions. Aquilani et al.
(2017) emphasise that there is a common focus in the customers, and one of the key CSFs is
customer focus/satisfaction.
The publication information of article title, author(s), journal name and publication year
was exported from Endnote to MS Excel.
Talib, Rahman, and Qureshi (2012) conducted a literature review on studies about TQM
in services and summarised them in 14 topics. Based on this, a list of primary topics was
developed and afterwards adjusted during the abstract/full text analysis. The adjusted list
of ‘use of TQM in services’ contains:
. Application of TQM in a specific activity / organisation

. Assessing a model/framework for TQM implementation
. Critical success factors (CSFs) in TQM implementation
. Developing a model/framework for TQM implementation
. Evaluation of TQM implementation results in a country-region / in an industry / in an
organisation
. Extent of TQM implementation in a country-region / in an industry
. Factors influencing TQM implementation
. Improving TQM implementation process by other approach(es)
. Relationship between TQM and customer satisfaction / TQM and job satisfaction /
TQM and overall performance
8 C. Zhang et al.
. TQM implementation issues/challenges

. TQM practices and TQM techniques/tools
Besides identifying the topic of the articles, it is also valuable to identify in detail which
items are discussed under a certain topic. ‘TQM practices’, ‘critical success factors (CSFs)
of TQM implementation’ and ‘TQM implementation issues/challenges’ were specially
investigated because they are closely related to implementation in practice. Practitioners
will benefit from knowing which TQM practices are most popular, which CSFs are most
important and what kind of challenges need more attention during TQM implementation.
The method followed has some limitations. To be precise, the used list of topics, as
stated above, was adjusted from Talib et al. (2012) and therefore some subjectivity may
have survived to our efforts for full objectivity.
3.3.3. Co-citation analysis

The purpose of co-citation analysis is to find the linkage between two references by count-
ing the times they were jointly cited by another article, thus forming a network of all the
references within a research area, the so-called ‘intellectual structure’ (Zupic & Cater,
2015). It is based on the assumption that the more two publications are cited together,
the closer is their relationship, and also the higher is their importance individually
(McCain, 1990). To conduct co-citation analysis, we first extracted all references of the
268 articles, and then used a data clean-up programme to do data cleaning and format trans-
formation. There were references that might be alternative representations of the same
thing. For example, name of the same author can be different in diverse references and
needed to be corrected, such like ‘De Silva, W.’ and ‘Silva, W. D.’ Using the clustering
function of the data clean-up programme, it was possible to reconcile these references
and unify them. To better refine the records, we also used Microsoft Excel to do the unify-
ing work. The refined list contained 9474 references.
Next, we calculate the frequency of co-occurrence of a pair of references in an article
with Microsoft Access. This process generated a list of co-citation network. Then the list
was imported into VOSviewer, a software which can generate maps based on network
data, to construct and visualise the network (van Eck & Waltman, 2011).
One of the main limitations of co-citation analysis is that citations take time to accumu-
late and, consequently, the most recent publications tend to be absent of the identified clus-
ters (Zupic & Cater, 2015). These same authors warn that important publications may not be
mapped if they have only few citations.
3.3.4. Co-word analysis

The rationale behind co-word analysis is similar to that of co-citation analysis. Co-word
analysis can be conducted based on article title, author keywords, abstract or full text.
Using only titles or author keywords will generate the problem of indexer effect, while
using abstract or full text will introduce noise due to the existence of irrelevant words
(Zupic & Cater, 2015). In this study, we chose the abstract of the 268 articles to do the
co-word analysis, considering that abstract is a summary of full text which, number-
wise, contains most of the critical words and less irrelevant words.
To analyse the evolution of the research on TQM, the study period of the 26 years
(1990–2017) was divided into two sub-periods: 1990–2003 and 2004–2017. Abstracts
from articles published in different sub-periods were extracted into two MS Excel
spreadsheets. Words that represent the same thing were unified, for example, ‘TQM’ and
‘total quality management’, ‘health care’ and ‘healthcare’.
The next step was to define the list of words used in co-word analysis. These words
were selected in two pools: author keywords and abstracts. With Microsoft Excel, it was
possible to count the most frequent words. Based on the literature review, 93 most frequent
words, which are relevant to the topic, were selected from 436 author keywords from 268
articles (Appendix 1). Then, the presence of these 93 words could be shown in Microsoft
Excel. Again, Microsoft Access and VOSviewer were used to do the network mapping for
co-words.
A limitation of co-word analysis is that one frequent word can have different meaning
and appear in different forms.
The last step of bibliometric approach (Zupic & Cater, 2015) is Visualization and
Interpretation that is done in the next sections.
4. Results
4.1. General overview of the database
4.1.1. Chronological evolution of the articles
The chronological evolution of the articles about the ‘use of TQM in services’ shows that it
is a path with irregular fluctuations Two peak values showed up in 1996 and 2011, with 21
and 17 articles respectively. There was a continuous increase of published research from
1990 to 1996, which means that the research on the ‘use of TQM in services’ developed
and gradually gained attention within the academic field. However, this trend was followed
by a decrease in the next 3 years and, then, by irregular ups and downs in the following
years. The total number of articles published in period 1990 to 2003 and 2004 to 2017
was 137 and 131 respectively. Meanwhile, after the peak in 1996, the average number of
articles in the period 1997 to 2006 and the period 2007 to 2017 is 9.7 and 9.2 per year
respectively, which shows that the ‘use of TQM in services’ has not faded as a research
topic in the academic world.
4.1.2. Researched geographical area

Concerning the geographical area investigated in the bibliometric database, 190 out of 268
articles deal with a specific geographic area, and the remaining 78 articles do not mention a
specific research country/region. The country which has been most analysed is the USA (47
articles), followed by the UK (18 articles) and India (18 articles). Asia, Europe and North
America are the top three continents most studied; together they represent 88.4% of all
researched countries/regions.
Among the 47 articles that studied the USA, 74.4% were published between 1991 and
1999, and among the 18 articles that studied the UK, 61.1% were also published between
1991 and 1999. The 18 articles that focus on India were all published after 2000. After clas-
sifying the countries/regions as developed or as developing, it is possible to obtain another
result regarding the chronological evolution of the articles. The total number of articles
focusing in developed areas and in developing areas was 105 and 75 respectively. The
number of articles per year analysing the ‘use of TQM in services’ reached the peak of
15 in 1996. After 1996, this number never exceeded 6 (per year). However, there has
been a growing effort from authors to study developing areas after 2000. There are irregular
fluctuations on both developed and developing areas, thus it is hard to make a prediction for
the trend of research geographic areas.
10 C. Zhang et al.
4.1.3. Researched industries

In the database, 95 articles analyse the use of TQM in general services, without a focus on a
particular service industry (35.4% of the total amount). The other 173 articles study the
application of TQM in specific service sector. There are 14 specific service industries inves-
tigated in the database (Table 3). Healthcare is the most studied industry, followed by
higher education, financial services and public sector. The above mentioned four industries
include the majority of the articles in the database (51.5%). It is interesting to notice that
during the period between 1990 and 2003, 44.5% focused on the use of TQM in healthcare
industry, but this focus was dispersed to other service sector or to the general service indus-
try during the period between 2004 and 2017. Healthcare is the only type of service where
the aggregated number of publications decreases comparing the sub-period of 1990–2003
and 2004–2017.
4.1.4. Journal characterisation

In the bibliometric database, there are 149 journals and 32 of them contain more than one
article. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence comprises 47 articles, which
means that 25% of the articles on ‘use of TQM in services’ was published in this
journal. The other journals with larger number of articles published are TQM Journal
(15 articles), International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management (12 articles),
Managing Service Quality (7 articles) and International Journal of Health Care Quality
Assurance (7 articles).
In order to assess the scientific domains of the journals in the database, we chose to
compare their SJR indicator (SCImago Journal Rank), a metric developed by Scopus Data-
base and calculated based on the number of citations a journal receives from other journals
during a certain year and the importance of the later ones (Butler, 2008). In this work, the
indicator used (SJR — SCImago Journal & Country Rank, 2016) means the weighted cita-
tions received in year 2016 to papers published in the journal in years 2015, 2014 and 2013.
Higher SJR values mean the journal has higher prestige (Butler, 2008). We also included
Clarivate Impact Factor, a categorisation tool for journals on the Web of Science Database
Table 3. Number of articles per specific researched industry.

Nr. of 1990– 2004–
Industry Articles Percentage 2003 Change 2017
General service sectors 95 35.4% 40 ↑ 55
Healthcare 85 31.7% 61 ↓ 24
Higher education 20 7.5% 6 ↑ 10
Financial services (banking and insurance) 17 6.3% 7 ↑ 10
Public sector 16 6.0% 7 ↑ 9
Hospitality (including hotel and tourism) 10 3.7% 4 ↑ 6
Transportation (including aviation) 8 3.0% 2 ↑ 6
IT and softer ware 7 2.6% 2 ↑ 5
Library 6 2.2% 2 ↑ 4
Telecommunication and automobile service 5 1.9% 0 ↑ 5
Courier 4 1.5% 0 ↑ 4
Others (Logistics, Engineering services, 4 1.5% 1 ↑ 3
Consulting services and Marketing services)
Note: Studies analysing more than one industry caused the total amount of articles per researched industry does not
match the number of articles in the bibliometric database.
Table 4. Top Journals with More Articles Published on ‘Use of TQM in Services’ (Source: SJR —
SCImago Journal & Country Rank 2016 and Clarivate Impact Factor 2016).
Journal SJR JIF No. of Articles*
International Journal of Production Research 1.463 2.325 3
Managing Service Quality** 0.858 3.100 7
Total Quality Management & Business Excellence 0.652 1.368 47
International Journal of Productivity and Performance 0.607 / 3
Management
Journal of nursing care quality 0.602 1.224 3
International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management 0.477 / 12
International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management 0.38 / 3
TQM Journal 0.362 / 15
International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance 0.278 / 7
Health Marketing Quarterly 0.197 / 3
Note: Only journals containing 3 or more articles are shown in the table. The order is based on the SJR value.
*No. of Articles refers to number of articles on ‘use of TQM in services’ in the database published in the journal
**Managing Service Quality continued as Journal of Service Theory and Practice in 2014
(Clarivate, 2018). Table 4 shows the SJR indicator and Clarivate Impact Factor of journals
(JIF) with 3 or more than 3 articles in the database. International Journal of Production
Research (1.463 SJR and 2.325 JIF) is the journal with highest impact factor, followed
by Managing Service Quality (0.858 SJR and 3.100 JIF) and Total Quality Management
& Business Excellence (0.652 SJR and 1.368 JIF).
4.1.5. Authors and papers’ citations

From our database of 268 papers, we generated Table 5, in which we present the authors
that authored or co-authored more than one of those papers, ordered by the number of
articles. This table shows 59 authors. However, only 20 authors have 3 or more papers.
The top 10 authors, regarding number of papers in the field, are:
. Rahman Z.
. Talib F.
. Zairi M.
. Rajendran C.
. Anantharaman R. N.
. Psomas E. L.
. Mitreva E.
. Ooi K. B.
. Qureshi M.
. Sureshchandar G. S.
. Tang K. H.
Also from our database of 268 papers, we present, in Appendix 2, a Table showing the details
of the papers as well as the number of citations in Scopus (255 papers) and in WoS (13 papers that
are only indexed in this database). The list is ordered by the number of citations. 243 papers have
at least 1 citation. But only the following 12 papers have more than 100 citations:
12 C. Zhang et al.
Table 5. Authors ordered by number of papers authored or co-authored.

Nr of Nr. of Nr of
Author papers Author papers Author papers
Rahman Z. 11 Ajmal M. M. 2 Kanji G. K. 2
Talib F. 9 Akhtar A. 2 Lam S. Y. 2
Zairi M. 7 Alavi J. 2 Laosirihongthong T. 2
Rajendran C. 6 Aly N. A. 2 Mani B. G. 2
Anantharaman R. N. 5 Alzahrani A. I. 2 McGrath M. S. 2
Psomas E. L. 5 Boerstler H. 2 Mosadeghrad A. M. 2
Mitreva E. 4 Brannon D. 2 Motwani J. G. 2
Ooi K. B. 4 Camison C. 2 O’Connor E. J. 2
Qureshi M. 4 Carman J. M. 2 Psychogios A. G. 2
Sureshchandar G. S. 4 DiMattia E. A. Jr. 2 Rao K. S. P. 2
Tang K. H. 4 Ehigie B. O. 2 Sakthivel P. B. 2
Antony J. 3 Ehrmeyer S. S. 2 Saravanan R. 2
Filiposki O. 3 Foster R. W. 2 Shortell S. M. 2
Lee V. H. 3 Gjorshevski H. 2 Smith A. D. 2
Nwabueze U. 3 Gunasekaran A. 2 Sohal A. 2
Pantouvakis A. 3 Helo P. T. 2 Taskov N. 2
Raju R. 3 Ho S. K. M. 2 Tuomi V. 2
Siddiqui J. 3 Hughes E. F. X. 2 Yasin M. M. 2
Sila I. 3 Isouard G. 2 Zinn J. S. 2
Weech-Maldonado R. 3 Jaca C. 2
. Shortell S.M., Obrien J.L., Carman J.M., Foster R.W., Hughes E.F.X., Boerstler H. &
Oconnor E.J. (1995), Assessing the Impact of Continuous Quality Improvement/
Total Quality Management: Concept versus Implementation
. Sila I. (2007), Examining the effects of contextual factors on TQM and performance
through the lens of organisational theories: An empirical study
. Antony J., Leung K., Knowles G., & Gosh S. (2002), Critical success factors of TQM
implementation in Hong Kong industries
. Sila I., & Ebrahimpour M. (2003), Examination and comparison of the critical factors
of total quality management (TQM) across countries
. Baird K., Hu K.J., & Reeve R. (2011), The relationships between organisational
culture, total quality management practices and operational performance
. Sureshchandar G.S., Rajendran C., & Anantharaman R.N. (2001), A holistic model
for total quality service
. Talib F., Rahman Z., & Qureshi M. (2011), Analysis of interaction among the barriers
to total quality management implementation using interpretive structural modelling
approach
. Prajogo D.I. (2005), The comparative analysis of TQM practices and quality per-
formance between manufacturing and service firms
. Brah S.A., Wong J.L., & Rao B.M. (2000), TQM and business performance in the
service sector: a Singapore study
. Furterer S., & Elshennawy A.K. (2005), Implementation of TQM and lean six sigma
tools in local government: a framework and a case study
. Kumar V., Choisne F., De Grosbois D., & Kumar U. (2009), Impact of TQM on com-
pany’s performance
. Stock G.N, McFadden K.L., Gowen C.R. (2007), Organizational culture, critical
success factors, and the reduction of hospital errors
4.2. Article characterisation

After careful reading and analysis of the abstract or full text of each article, we obtained the
number of articles on each topic. As shown in Figure 1, the most salient topic is ‘evaluation
of TQM implementation results in (an) industry(ies)’, studied by 55 articles and it counts for
20.5% in the database. The next most popular topics are ‘CSFs of TQM implementation’
(12.7%), ‘developing a model/framework for TQM implementation’ (12.3%) and ‘evalu-
ation of TQM implementation results in (an) organization(s)’ (11.2%). There are three
topics on ‘evaluation of TQM implementation results’, representing 34.3% in total. The
two topics on ‘application of TQM’ represent 16.0% in total. The large number of articles
that focus on ‘evaluation of TQM implementation results’ reveals that the effectiveness of
TQM is at the core of research. As indicated in the literature review, there is indeed great
effort to suggest TQM implementation models/frameworks, as TQM implementation is the
third most salient topic.
Apart from identifying the topics of the articles, we also identified which TQM practice,
what CSFs and implementation issues are discussed in those articles, in order to provide
suggestions and alerts to TQM professionals and managers.
There are 63 different TQM practices proposed in the database, and the most important
are leadership, customer focus, and training. Concerning the CSFs of TQM implemen-
tation, the most emphasised is top management commitment (50 articles mention it), fol-
lowed by customer focus (29 articles) and education and training (20 articles). Regarding
the issues/challenges, 22 articles point out that lack of top management commitment is a
barrier of TQM implementation. Moreover, resistance to change and lack of clear
mission and TQM strategic plan are highlighted by 14 articles respectively, and are tied
for the second most analysed issue/challenge of TQM implementation.
Besides the consistency of the results among Practices, CSFs and Issues, this result is in
accordance with the result of Sebastianelli and Tamimi (2003).
The top three most notable items are ‘top management commitment/leadership’,
‘customer focus’ and ‘education and training’. Combined with the results that ‘lack of
top management commitment/leadership’ is ranked as the most emphasised obstacle,
it can be concluded that ‘top management commitment’ is very critical for TQM
implementation, however, the frequent failure of ensuring ‘top management commit-
ment’ hinders the success of TQM application in services. This is an alert for TQM pro-
fessionals and managers in service industries. At the same time, attention should also be
paid to ‘education and training’ since ‘lack of education and training’ ranks high among
the challenges. In contrast, the other critical item—customer focus—is generally better
performed, since it ranked only as the 13th most discussed challenge of TQM
implementation.
4.3. Co-citation network

Based on the 9474 records extracted from the 268 articles, there are 287,820 pairs of co-
occurrences of citations and it is impractical to employ a co-citation analysis to all of
them. The solution was to choose the co-occurrences above a certain number in order to
just include the most influential documents (McCain, 1990). In this study, only co-occur-
rences equal or above 7 were imported to VOSviewer, generating a map of the network
for the 74 most influential references. In order to define the clusters based on the closeness
of connections, we chose Association strength option as the method of normalisation.
Minimum cluster size was set as 5 to eliminate insignificant and uninteresting clusters
(van Eck & Waltman, 2011).
14
C. Zhang et al.
Figure 1. Number of articles per topic.
The co-citation network mapping is shown in Figure 2. Documents are displayed by the
first author and publication year. The larger size of label and bubble represents the higher
weight of that item, while the shorter line represents the stronger connection of two docu-
ments. The documents belonging to one cluster have the same colour. Being in the same
cluster represents that the two items are connected or they both have connection with
other item(s).
There are six clusters containing 74 items in global. The name of each cluster, defined
based on the documents contained in that cluster, is placed next to each cluster in Figure 2.
Table 6 sums up the documents in each cluster and labels each one according to the
topic discussed.
The Cluster 1, Measuring Key Dimensions of TQM, is at the centre of the map, which
means that the included documents have the most connections with the ones in other clus-
ters. With the aim of finding a valid and reliable way to measure the TQM implementation,
the four representative documents all investigated on the key dimensions/CSFs of TQM and
proposed measures for them. The citations of these documents are mainly from those
articles with topic ‘evaluation of TQM implementation results’.
TQM and Organizational Performance, the second cluster, includes papers that discuss
the relationship between TQM and its influence on organisational performance, which pro-
vides references on TQM effectiveness. These documents also indicate the predictors of
organisational performance during TQM implementation. For example, Powell (1995) con-
cludes that certain tacit elements such as organisational culture, employee empowerment,
and top management commitment drive successful TQM implementation and generate
competitive advantage. This cluster contributes to the causal relationship between TQM,
quality performance and organisational performance at the perspective of strategic
management.
Cluster number 3 can be named as Quality Gurus’ Philosophies and TQM as the
representative documents are works from quality gurus, such as Deming, Crosby, Feigen-
baum and Juran. Deming (1986) proposes a theory of quality management developed
from his famous 14 Points for Management. Crosby (1979) teaches managers to avoid
quality problems at each stage of production. Feigenbaum (1983) addresses company’s
Figure 2. Visualised co-citation network.

16 C. Zhang et al.
Table 6. Co-citation clusters and documents.

Cluster Name Documents in each cluster
C1: Measuring Key Ahire and Golhar (1996), Badri, Davis, and Davis (1995),
Dimensions of TQM Benson, Saraph, and Schroeder (1991), Black and Porter (1996),
Cronin and Taylor (1992), Flynn, Schroeder, and Sakakibara
(1994), Gronroos (1982), Huq and Stolen (1998),
Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1985, 1988), Saraph, Benson,
and Schroeder (1989), Schneider and Bowen (1995),
Sureshchandar, Rajendran, and Anantharaman (2001), Terziovski
and Samson (1999), Zeithaml, Parasuraman, and Berry (1990)
C2: TQM and Organizational Choi and Eboch (1998), Cronbach (1951), Flynn, Schroeder, and
Performance Sakakibara (1995), Forza and Filippini (1998), Hendricks and
Singhal (1997), Nunnally (1967), Powell (1995), Reed, Lemak,
and Montgomery (1996), Samson and Terziovski (1999),
Silvestro (1998)
C3: Quality Gurus’ Anderson (1994), Crosby (1979), Cummings and Worley (2001),
Philosophies and TQM Dean and Bowen (1994), Deming (1982, 1986), Feigenbaum
(1983), Hackman and Wageman (1995), Juran and Gryna (1993),
Juran (1988), Oakland (1989), Waldman (1994)
C4: TQM Practices Brah, Wong, and Rao (2000), Kaynak (2003), Khamalah and
Lingaraj (2007), Prajogo (2005), Samat et al. (2006), Sila and
Ebrahimpour (2002), Ueno (2008), Woon (2000)
C5: Data Analysis Methods Bagozzi and Yi (1988), Browne and Cudeck (1993), Claver-
Cortes, Pereira-Moliner, Tari, and Molina-Azorin (2008),
Fotopoulos and Psomas (2009), Hair, Black, Babin, Anderson,
and Tatham (1995), Hoang, Igel, and Laosirihongthong (2006),
Kline (1998), Lam, Lee, Ooi, and Lin (2011), Ooi, Lin, Tan, and
Chong (2011), Prajogo and Sohal (2003, 2006), Sureshchandar,
Rajendran, Anantharaman, and Kamalanabhan (2002)
C6: Profile of Services Sectors Baker, Berry, and Parasuraman (1988), Berry and Clark (1986),
Bitner (1992), Bitner, Booms, and Tetreault (1990), Bowen and
Schneider (1988), Edvardsson (1994), Folger and Greenberg
(1985), Milakovich (1995), Rust, Zahorik, and Keiningham
(1994), Schneider and Bowen (1992, 1993), Schneider,
Gunnarson, and Niles-Jolly (1994), Schneider, Brief, and Guzzo
(1996), Smith (1995), Zemke and Schaaf (1990)
quality development to ensure customer satisfaction. Juran and Gryna (1993) provide a
comprehensive and balanced reflection on the impact of quality on all aspects of
organisations.
Cluster 4 includes documents that investigate the applicability and effectiveness of
certain TQM practices, such as employee empowerment, customer focus and continuous
improvement (Samat, Ramayah, & Mat Saad, 2006). It is why we labelled it as TQM Prac-
tices. The empirical data of the major papers were all collected through surveys and inter-
views in service firms. These studies are commonly cited because they provide affirmation
for the validity of TQM practices.
The visualisation of Cluster 5 is different from that of the previous four. The book
Multivariate Data Analysis written by Hair, J.F. (1995) is at the centre with small
bubbles scattered around it as satellites, and therefore this is the reason for naming it
Data Analysis Methods. The small bubbles are not connected with each other, but only
with the centre. Hair’s book teaches multivariate data analysis and provides invaluable
information on data analysis methods for other researchers.
The map of Cluster 6, Profile of Services Sectors, is similar to that of Cluster 5. It is

represented by Zemke and Schaaf’s (1990) book, which introduces the best service organ-
isations and their management choices. The profiles of service leaders provide information
for articles which analyse TQM related topics within the range of the service industry.
The first four clusters are closely related to TQM. Cluster 1 and Cluster 2 aim at iden-
tifying the effectiveness of TQM implementation. Cluster 1 is answering the question
‘What is key to TQM success?’ and ‘How can organization know the degree it has
achieved?’, whilst Cluster 2 is answering the question ‘What is the impact of TQM
implementation on organizational performance?’, and Cluster 3 is connecting quality phil-
osophies with TQM. Cluster 4 is discussing the components of TQM implementation – the
practices. There is no cluster focusing on the framework of TQM implementation, which is
the gap of the research in the field. This result is consistent with Sila and Ebrahimpour
(2003).
4.4. Co-word network

Similar with co-citation analysis, the threshold of co-occurrence of a pair of words was set
at 5 times, in order to identify the most significant words in this research field. And to
analyse the evolution of the research, the study period of the 26 years (1990–2017) was
divided into two sub-periods: 1990–2003 and 2004–2017. It gave place to two networks
of co-word: Figure 3 contains the co-word network for 1990 to 2003 period, and includes
35 items. Figure 4, refers to the 2004 to 2017 period and accounts with 47 items.
4.4.1. Co-word network of 1990 to 2003

The first map contains 4 clusters (see Figure 3 above). The clusters are named based on the
representative words and detailed in Table 7.
‘TQM’ and ‘implementation’ have the biggest bubble and are mapped at the centre, and
they represent Clusters 1 and 2 respectively. The rest words in Cluster 1 only have connec-
tion with ‘TQM’, so the label of this cluster is TQM. The words in Cluster 2, such as
‘barrier’, ‘case study’, ‘framework’ and ‘success factor’, connect with ‘TQM’ and
‘implementation’ both pointing for the name TQM Implementation. In Cluster 3, ‘health-
care’ and ‘hospital’ have the bigger bubble, connecting with ‘model’, ‘leadership’, ‘com-
mitment’, ‘effectiveness’, ‘quality improvement’ and ‘productivity’. It is consistent with
the previous result that healthcare is the most analysed industry in the ‘use of TQM in ser-
vices’, consequently we have the group TQM in Healthcare. The words in Cluster 4 are
related to the Empirical Adoption of TQM. ‘Principle’ has strong relatedness with ‘philos-
ophy’ and ‘techniques’, indicating that they were usually studied simultaneously.
4.4.2. Co-word network of 2004 to 2017

The first thing that can be noticed after seeing the map of the period 2004–2017 (Figure 4
above) is that the keywords increased significantly both in frequency and in variety. This
demonstrates that the research field has been growing rapidly and that the literature has
greatly enriched. The clusters are named based on the representative words and detailed
in Table 8.
Similarly, with the previous sub-period, ‘TQM’ (representative word of Cluster 1) and
‘implementation’ are the most used words. In Cluster 2, the words with smaller bubbles,
such as ‘success factor’ and ‘business performance’ do not have connection with each
18 C. Zhang et al.
Figure 3. Visualised co-word Network for Articles Published in 1990–2003.
other, but they all connected with ‘TQM’ and ‘implementation’. ‘Healthcare’ and ‘hospital’
in Cluster 3 are still representing the most researched industry. In Cluster 4, ‘practices’ is
connected with ‘service companies’, ‘service industries’ and ‘service organizations’ in
one direction, and with ‘commitment’, ‘leadership’, ‘process management’, ‘customer
focus’ and ‘teamwork’ in the other direction. Unlike the previous map, ‘principle’ does
Figure 4. Visualised Co-word Network for Articles Published in 2004–2017.

Table 7. Co-word clusters and Representative Words, 1990–2003.

Cluster No. of items Representative Items
C1: TQM 13 TQM
C2: TQM 8 barrier, case studies, framework, implementation, success
Implementation factor
C3: TQM in Healthcare 9 commitment, effectiveness, healthcare, hospital,
leadership, practices, productivity, quality improvement
C4: Empirical Adoption 5 empirical, model, philosophy, principle, techniques
not have connection with ‘techniques’, which shows that the number of research studying
them together is decreasing thus the co-occurrence of them is below 5 times in this co-word
study. Cluster 5 is mainly representative of the word ‘model’, which is an important topic in
this field.
4.4.3. Evolution between the two sub-periods

To better trace the trend and changes of the most significant words, they were separated
according to their existence in the map and then classified into five categories: Research
direction, Research industry, Research methodology, TQM dimension/practice and TQM
outcome (Table 9). The classification was based on the understanding in the abstract analy-
sis of the database.
Firstly, the second sub-period contains 12 more words, and the connections between
words are more complex, as shown in the map. This indicates that the research field of the
‘use of TQM in services’ has been expanding over time. Moreover, the words that didn’t
have connection (the co-occurrence was below 5 times) in the first sub-period, are now con-
nected in the second sub-period. For example, ‘practices’ and ‘model’ show strong connec-
tion in the second sub-period, which means that researchers were using (TQM) practices to
build (TQM) models or using (TQM) models to improve (TQM) practices.
Secondly, there are words appearing only in the map of first sub-period (the least co-
occurrence times of the word and any other word was below 5). For example, ‘CQI’ (con-
tinuous quality improvement), ‘quality assurance’, ‘quality control’ and ‘process improve-
ment’ do not appear in the second map because their popularity in this research field has
been decreasing over time. The word ‘case studies’ only appears in the first map, indicating
that the number of research papers based on case study is decreasing. However, by compar-
ing the co-occurrence data, it was found that the absence of ‘financial service’ in the second
Table 8. Co-word clusters and representative words, 2004–2017.

Cluster No. of items Items
C1: TQM 7 TQM
C2: TQM 8 barrier, business performance, competitive advantage,
Implementation implementation, productivity, reliability, success factor
C3: TQM in 10 challenge, continuous improvement, customer satisfaction,
Healthcare enabler, framework, healthcare, hospital, philosophy,
principle, service quality
C4: TQM Practices 16 commitment, culture, customer focus, empirical, leadership,
process management, teamwork, top management,
training, practices
C5: TQM Model 6 model, structural equation model, techniques
20 C. Zhang et al.
Table 9. Co-word evolution of ‘use of TQM in services’.

Word Theme Only in first map In both maps Only in second map
Research Direction / barrier, challenge, critical factor, CSF,
effectiveness, enabler, reliability,
framework, instrument,
model, philosophy,
practices, principle,
techniques, success
factor
Research Industry financial service healthcare, higher ICT, service companies,
education, hospital, service industries
public sector, service
organisation
Research case studies empirical structural equation model
Methodology
TQM Dimension CQI, quality commitment, continuous benchmarking, customer
/practice assurance, improvement, culture, focus, employee
quality control, leadership, process involvement, KM,
quality management, top Lean, teamwork
improvement management, training
TQM Outcome / customer satisfaction, business excellence,
productivity, service business performance,
quality competitive advantage,
competitiveness,
organisational
performance
map does not indicate that the researchers didn’t study it during 2004 to 2017, but simply
that the highest number of co-occurrence of ‘financial service’ and another word in 1990–
2003 is 4, below the threshold of 5 times; while highest number in 2004–2017 is 5, equal to
the threshold.
Thirdly, the words that appear in both maps have prominent meaning in the research
field. They are popular research focus throughout its history. It is noticeable that the
bubble size of some words becomes bigger in the second sub-period, such as ‘practice’.
‘Top management’, ‘commitment’, ‘continuous improvement’ and ‘training’ also show a
similar trend. This is because on the one hand, the practices related to them were applied
in the TQM implementation more than before thus they were more discussed when evalu-
ating the TQM results, on the other hand, they were more emphasised by the academic
world than before due to effectiveness of the practices. Consequently, the word ‘empirical’
also appears more frequently because of the increasing number of studies using empirical
data to verify the effectiveness of TQM practices.
Among the words appearing on both sub-periods, the size of some bubbles shrinks, such
as ‘healthcare’ and ‘hospital’. This is because that there was a decreasing trend of the inter-
est of studying TQM use in the healthcare industry. The total number of publications in the
first and second sub-periods didn’t decrease too much, counted as 137 and 131 respectively.
However, according to the abstract analysis, there are 85 articles investigating the health-
care industry, among which 61 articles were published in the first sub-period and only
24 articles were published in the second sub-period.
Fourthly, the words which only appear in the second sub-period suggest that they were
not as prevalent in studies before 2004. ‘ICT’ (information and computer technology) is one
of the examples in terms of researched industry. The words related to TQM practices are
‘benchmarking’, ‘customer focus’, ‘employee involvement’, ‘lean’ and ‘teamwork’,

showing that their discussion was growing. The appearance of ‘KM’ (knowledge manage-
ment) indicates that researchers started to analyse the interaction effects between KM and
TQM. The word ‘business performance’, ‘business excellence’, ‘competitive advantage’
and ‘competitiveness’ also gained more attention in the second sub-period. This is consist-
ent with the abstract analysis. Among the 29 articles studying ‘relationship between TQM
and overall performance’, only 4 of them were published in the first sub-period while the
remaining 25 articles were published after 2004. The emergence of ‘structural equation
model’ indicates that more and more researchers are using this tool to study TQM.
5. Discussion and conclusion

The practical application of TQM in service sectors is an important topic in the quality man-
agement field. It was worthy to conduct a bibliometric analysis based on the journal articles
to identify the most salient themes, the trends, gaps and weaknesses in this research field.
Our bibliometric database contains 268 articles published between 1990 and 2017.
They were extracted from Scopus and WoS. Regarding the chronological evolution,
1996 and 2011 are the two peaks in terms of the number of publications, while the remain-
ing years show irregular fluctuation. However, the average publication quantity per ten
years is stable, which indicates that the topic of ‘use of TQM in services’ didn’t fade in
the academic world.
39.2% of the articles focus on the developed countries/regions and 20.8% of them
investigate developing areas. The remaining articles do not concentrate on a specific geo-
graphic area. The USA is the most studied country, followed by the UK and India. The
1990s were boom years for research on developed areas. In contrast, the studies on devel-
oping areas were most conducted after 2000.
Healthcare is the most researched industry but the interest in analysing TQM implemen-
tation in healthcare is dropping.
Among the 149 journals in the database, Total Quality Management & Business Excel-
lence rank the first in number of published articles, and International Journal of Production
Research is the journal with the highest prestige based on the rank of SJR indicator.
According to our abstract analysis, the top three most salient topics are ‘evaluation of
TQM implementation results in (an) industry(ies)’, ‘CSFs of TQM implementation’ and
‘developing a model/framework for TQM implementation’. ‘Top management commit-
ment/leadership’ is one of the most critical dimensions in TQM implementation. But the
difficulty of ensuring top management commitment is the biggest challenge for TQM
success, which should be highlighted for TQM professionals and managers.
Co-citation analysis was conducted based on the 9474 records cited by the 268 articles.
Our analysis generated six clusters: C1-Measuring Key Dimensions of TQM, C2-TQM and
Organizational Performance, C3-Quality Gurus’ Philosophies and TQM, C4-TQM Prac-
tices, C5-Data Analysis Methods and C6-Profile of Service Sectors. There is not a
cluster for TQM implementation frameworks, indicating that the research on this topic is
still under development, which is a gap in the conceptual structure.
Co-word analysis was performed for the period 1990–2003 and 2004–2017 separ-
ately, on the abstract of the 268 articles. The evolution shows that the studies in the
second sub-period are growing and becoming more intensive. The words related to
TQM practices are gaining more and more attention, for example, ‘continuous improve-
ment’ and ‘culture’. The emerging practices are ‘benchmarking’, ‘employee involve-
ment’, and ‘lean’, etc. Consistent with the abstract analysis, healthcare is the industry
22 C. Zhang et al.
studied by most articles. Other important industries are higher education and public
sectors.
Table 10 summarises the answers to our initial research questions (RQ1 and RQ2).
5.1. Implications for research

Our results suggest the following directions for future research:
. Urgently create a framework/model to guide the application of TQM in services.

. Research the relationship between TQM and job satisfaction.
. Study the relationship between TQM and customer satisfaction.
. Study the application of TQM to other services beyond healthcare.
. Investigate the so many different TQM tools that are absent from our network maps.
. Research TQM in services in developing countries (there are very few studies on this).
. Better understand the barriers and difficulties that oppose success in the application of
TQM in services.
. Try to overcome the limitation that results from the fact that the majority of the
empirical studies are case studies, which, by lacking mutual connection, makes gen-
eralisation impracticable.
5.2. Implications for management

Our results are also beneficial for management. In effect,
. This paper offers to managers a sketch of the landscape of the field, and informs them
about the trends, patterns, gaps and weaknesses in implementing TQM in services in
chronological and geographical analysis.
. The identification of the existence of a vast literature on the implementation of TQM
to services testifies in favour of using it in practice.
. The services in which TQM is more applied (healthcare) and respective relevant lit-
erature were identified. Thus, practitioners in these services can apply TQM in a more
advised and assured way.
. The most studied TQM practices used in services were identified (leadership,
customer focus, and training), which allows to managers a more informed appli-
cation of TQM in services. The fact that these practices appear in our network
maps is an indication of their success – and this is important information for
practitioners.
. Our research detected that the implementation of TQM in services encountered
several critical success factors, challenges and difficulties (top management commit-
ment, education and training, resistance to change, lack of a clear mission and lack of
a TQM strategic plan). This is important for managers, since it makes them aware of
the success factors and the obstacles they may face.
5.3. Limitations
This study contains limitations. On the one hand, the chosen databases for bibliometric
analysis, Scopus and WoS, do not include books. Thus, it is possible that the sample
does not perfectly represent the whole picture of this research field. On the other hand,
Table 10. Answers to RQ 1 and RQ 2.

RQ Answer to Research Questions
RQ1: What are the most . Most salient themes in the The effectiveness of TQM is at
salient themes in 26 years of research of TQM the core of research.
implementing TQM in in services: There is a great effort to propose
services sectors? – evaluation of TQM => models/frameworks for TQM
implementation results in implementation.
an industry(ies)
– CSFs of TQM
implementation
– developing a model/
framework for TQM
implementation
. Most salient TQM practices,
CSFs and implementation
issue: High consistency of the results
– Practices: leadership, among Practices, CSFs and
customer focus, and => Implementation issues (result
training in in accordance with
– CSFs: top management Sebastianelli and Tamimi
commitment, customer (2003))
focus, and education and
training
. Implementation issues: lack
of top management
commitment, resistance to
change and lack of a clear
mission
TRENDS AND PATTERNS:

RQ2: What are the trends, . the ‘use of TQM in services’ is not a fading topic in academic world
gaps and weaknesses in (after the peak in 1996, the average number of articles in period
this field? 1997–2006 and 2007–2017 is 9.7 and 9.2 per year, respectively)
. ‘practices’ and ‘model’ established a stronger connection in the
period 2004-2017, showing that researchers are using TQM practices
to build TQM model and employing it for improving the practices.
. concern about ‘top management’, ‘commitment’, ‘continuous
improvement’ and ‘training’ is increasing.
. the extensive adoption of TQM in Healthcare demonstrates that this
sector has an urgent need for quality
. the US is the most mentioned country along with the UK and India.
. new sectors and challenges are emerging: ‘ICT’ (information and
computer technology), ‘knowledge management’, ‘employee
involvement’, ‘lean’ and ‘teamwork’.
GAPS AND WEAKNESSES

. almost not explored themes:
– Relationship between TQM and job satisfaction
– Relationship between TQM and customer satisfaction
– TQM tools
. research area lacking standard framework because case study
method, a popular methodology adopted in this field, limits the
generalisation of the outcomes
. the knowledge body in developed countries is still in the infancy
stage
. the number of studies in service sectors rather than Healthcare is low
24 C. Zhang et al.
there were 6 articles excluded from the database since it was impossible to access the full
text. Moreover, we used the work of Talib et al. (2012) for making the list of primary topics
that guided our analysis. Some topics not included in Talib et al. (2012)’s paper, may be left
behind (e.g. drivers).
Future researchers may choose other databases which include books and other type of
documents. Moreover, it is also worthy to analyse the chronological evolution of each topic
to identify the trends and developments of this research field. Investigation of TQM tech-
niques or research nature (for example, empirical or not, quantitative or qualitative) can be
other alternative directions for future studies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Supplemental data
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed https://doi.org/10.1080/
14783363.2020.1732811.
ORCID
Maria R. A. Moreira http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4439-6230
Paulo S. A. Sousa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0578-1593
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Total Quality Management & Business Excellence

ISSN: 1478-3363 (Print) 1478-3371 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ctqm20

A bibliometric view on the use of total quality

Chen Zhang, Maria R.A. Moreira & Paulo S.A. Sousa

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A bibliometric view on the use of total quality management in services

*Corresponding author. Email: mrosario@fep.up.pt

© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

employee involvement is insufﬁcient. The second one is human resource management

the description, evaluation, and monitoring of publications, it is possible to conduct a clear,

3.2. Research Design

3.3. Application of bibliometric techniques

Table 1. Bibliometric techniques and research questions.

Table 2. Keywords Combined within Search

3.3.2. Analysis: publication counting and abstract analysis

. Application of TQM in a speciﬁc activity / organisation

. TQM implementation issues/challenges

3.3.3. Co-citation analysis

3.3.4. Co-word analysis

4.1.2. Researched geographical area

4.1.3. Researched industries

4.1.4. Journal characterisation

Table 3. Number of articles per speciﬁc researched industry.

4.1.5. Authors and papers’ citations

Table 5. Authors ordered by number of papers authored or co-authored.

4.2. Article characterisation

4.3. Co-citation network

Figure 2. Visualised co-citation network.

Table 6. Co-citation clusters and documents.

The map of Cluster 6, Proﬁle of Services Sectors, is similar to that of Cluster 5. It is

4.4. Co-word network

4.4.1. Co-word network of 1990 to 2003

4.4.2. Co-word network of 2004 to 2017

Figure 3. Visualised co-word Network for Articles Published in 1990–2003.

Figure 4. Visualised Co-word Network for Articles Published in 2004–2017.

Table 7. Co-word clusters and Representative Words, 1990–2003.

4.4.3. Evolution between the two sub-periods

Table 8. Co-word clusters and representative words, 2004–2017.

Table 9. Co-word evolution of ‘use of TQM in services’.

‘benchmarking’, ‘customer focus’, ‘employee involvement’, ‘lean’ and ‘teamwork’,

5. Discussion and conclusion

5.1. Implications for research

. Urgently create a framework/model to guide the application of TQM in services.

5.2. Implications for management

Table 10. Answers to RQ 1 and RQ 2.

TRENDS AND PATTERNS:

GAPS AND WEAKNESSES

Feigenbaum, A. V. (1983). Total quality control. New York: McGraw-Hill.

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