Controlling for Quality: Climate, Leadership and Quality Behavior

This study concentrates on employees' quality-related behaviors, explaining the psychological mechanisms of why employees behave in a nonquality manner and presenting a new quality climate measure. The hypotheses are: 1) patterns of employee behavior are not aligned with formal policies that define the quality-related behaviors desired by management; and 2) employees behave better in organizations with a high-quality climate and transformational leadership. Data were collected in a food plant from 252 employees in 25 departments. Results indicate that employees frequently do not behave according to formal quality policies. Departmental quality climate scores and leadership scores correlated negatively with percentages of nonquality behaviors, suggesting some form of social control.