Top Management Support and Quality Management Effectiveness in Manufacturing: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Background and Purpose: Top management support (TMS) occupies an uneasy place in quality management research. It is the variable most consistently associated with TQM success, yet the mechanisms through which executive commitment shapes quality outcomes remain underspecified. Existing reviews treat enablers and barriers as separate bodies of literature, missing the structural logic that connects them.
Design/Methodology/Approach: Following the PRISMA 2020 protocol, searches across Scopus, Web of Science, and Google Scholar (2005–2025) yielded an initial pool of 287 records. Four sequential screening stages, quality appraisal (Cohen's κ = 0.81), and four rounds of citation tracking produced a final corpus of 64 peer-reviewed articles. Thematic Synthesis (Thomas & Harden, 2008) guided the coding and integration of findings.
Findings: Top management commitment and involvement (82% of articles), quality decision empowerment (56%), and resource allocation (52%) are the three leading enablers of quality management effectiveness (QME). Production–quality goal conflict (62%) and a 'ship-first, inspect-later' culture (55%) are the two dominant barriers. Mediation evidence from PLS-SEM studies across multiple sectors shows TMS reaches quality outcomes most reliably through quality culture and quality manager empowerment rather than through a direct performance pathway.
Originality/Value: The study reframes the enabler–barrier relationship as a unified governance structure — each barrier being the predictable absence of its corresponding enabler — rather than two unrelated research streams. An Integrated Conceptual Framework positions quality culture and quality manager empowerment as joint mediating mechanisms linking TMS to QME. The Thai IATF 16949 manufacturing context, empirically absent from the literature, is identified as a priority for future empirical work, and specific research directions are proposed.