CRITICAL FACTORS OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT USED IN RESEARCH QUESTIONNAIRES: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE KANAGI KANAPATHY Sunway University College No. 5, Jalan Universiti, Bandar Sunway 46150 Petaling Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan Tel: +60(3)74918622 Ext. 8340 Fax: +60(3)56358633 kanagik@sunway.edu.my ABSTRACT This paper examines the emergence of critical factors of quality management in the development of quality management research questionnaires. A review of literature shows that 27 different critical factors or constructs were developed and used by established researchers in the field. Out of these, 8 most popular critical factors have been identified – top management support, quality information availability, quality information usage, employee training, employee involvement, product/process design, supplier quality and customer orientation. This paper suggests that the critical factors of quality management be standardized so that a sound comparison can be made between research findings of studies conducted in various countries of the world. Key words: critical factors, quality management, research, questionnaires. INTRODUCTION As businesses step into the Information Technology (IT) ruled global market, the ability to produce a better product than the competitor becomes a great challenge. As Feigenbaum (1994, p.78) had expressed, “Changing a company, from a ‘make-it-cheaper-and-quicker past’ to a ‘make-it-better future’ is perhaps the most demanding task of managers and engineers today”. Total Quality Management (TQM) and ISO 9000 are the current Quality Management Systems that most firms implement to navigate their route to a ‘make-it-better future’. When the firms concerned “make-it-better”, then they are able to ‘perform’ to make profitable investments. Quality management systems such as ISO 9000 and TQM help firms to better organize and coordinate their operations by documenting their processes, defining responsibilities of employees and by putting in preventive measures to prevent errors. Researchers who conceptualized quality management practices and developed reliable research instruments such as questionnaires made significant contributions towards advancement of research in this area. Critical factors of quality management are important in the development of these questionnaires. The objective of this paper is to identify the most commonly used critical factors of quality management. These same critical factors can