Comparing quality management practices in Hong Kong-owned and Japan-owned manufacturing firms in Mainland China

This paper reports the research that compares quality management practices of Hong Kong-owned (HK sample) and Japanese-owned manufacturing companies (JP sample) in mainland China. The comparison is based on the USMBQA framework and a questionnaire survey. It is found that, although all in mainland China, Japan-owned manufacturing firms implement quality management to a greater extent than their Hong Kong counterparts. It is also found that in the Japanese sample, three quality categories directly contribute to business result, while in the HK sample, only one category directly contributes to business results. In both JK and JP samples, customer focus is found to be directly related to business results. The result is supported by a few previous studies. However, it is rarely pointed out that this finding is different to the general principle of the latest US Quality Award framework where a human-resources focus directly contributes to business results while a customer-focus does not. The result will trigger future research on the validity of quality award models, especially in countries other than the USA.