PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to report the results of an investigation on the use of total quality management (TQM) tools, techniques and concepts among Sri Lankan service organizations.Design/methodology/approachThis research consisted of a literature review and a questionnaire survey done among 99 service organizations in Sri Lanka. First, the factors that are commonly used by TQM organizations were identified through the literature review.FindingsThe analysis revealed that there is an enthusiasm among managers in implementing TQM in their organizations. According to the respondents, 41 per cent of the organizations have already implemented TQM. However, deeper analysis of data revealed that there is a lack of thorough understanding of TQM philosophies and techniques among the managers.Practical implicationsThe findings of the paper will provide information to the practitioners to implement TQM in their organizations and to academics to design courses in TQM.Originality/valueIt is important to implement the related tools and techniques in full to realize the benefits of TQM. This paper reveals the level of use and understanding of these tools and techniques by the service sector managers in Sri Lanka.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are becoming popular among business organizations globally as well as locally. The main reason is that the corporate benefits gained through such implementations. However, in the event of such a project failing, the company has to incur a huge loss. Therefore, identifying the issues involved with the ERP implementation is of paramount importance. This paper aims to identify factors affecting the successful implementation of ERP projects, find out the level of practice of each factor in Sri Lankan organizations and recommend best practices to minimize the ERP project failures. The findings of this research are based on a questionnaire survey performed among 31 client organizations and 32 ERP consultants selected through judgmental sampling method. There are 3 factors each for client and consultant perspectives where the level of practice is poor, they are; product selection procedure, project planning, client commitment, competency of consultants and communication of support requirements during the pre-implementation stage. Except for above, level of practice of rest of the factors is good. Set of guidelines has been suggested to overcome the poorly practiced implementation factors in order to follow in future ERP implementations for both clients and consultants.

Maintaining sustainable operations has become a major responsibility of practitioners. Sustainable practices are executed to ensure sustainable performance. Many studies conducted to examine the outcomes of sustainable practices have focused either on the economic outcomes, social outcomes or environmental outcomes of such operations disregarding the Triple Bottom Line Approach to evaluating sustainable performance. Among them the majority have focused on environmental outcomes. Less focus is placed on developing countries or countries in South Asia. Against this background this paper aims to examine the outcomes of sustainable practices towards sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in a developing nation in South Asia. A study was conducted among 154 apparel manufacturing and exporting firms of Sri Lanka in relation to their sustainable practices and sustainable performance as members of supply chains. The sustainable practices were studied in relation to orientation, collaboration, continuity, risk management and pro-activity while sustainable performance was analyzed along economic performance, social performance and environmental performance of these firms. The findings were analyzed using Variance Based Structural Equation Modelling (Partial Least Squares) and it revealed that sustainable practices lead to sustainable performance even in the context of a developing nation in South Asia, highlighting the importance of the execution of sustainable practices irrespective of the level of development of a nation.

Establishing relationships with suppliers has been found critically important for manufacturing organizations in meeting the challenges faced by them for maintaining sustainability in global supply chains. At the same time, managing these relationships so formed, by way of governance strategies is considered equally important in ensuring positive outcomes through the relationships established. This assertion of acquiring positive outcomes through managed relationships, suggested by the transaction cost theory was tested using data from the apparel manufacturing and exporting industry of Sri Lanka in relation to the sustainable performance of manufacturing firms. The results revealed that supplier governance negatively influences the relationship between sustainable practices and sustainable performance of manufacturing firms in the apparel manufacturing and exporting industry of Sri Lanka indicating that governance strategies do not always bring positive outcomes. These findings contribute to the knowledge by providing evidence as to the viability of governance mechanisms in achieving positive outcomes through buyer-supplier relationships in the context of developing countries.

Sustainability encompasses three dimensions, i.e., economic, environmental, and social, which are commonly termed as Triple Bottom Line. Since most businesses are profit-oriented, economic sustainability is identified as the widely considered dimension of sustainability in prior literature. The present study investigates to what extent manufacturing companies are using social practices and assesses sustainability performance referring to social sustainability practices followed by manufacturing companies. To address this issue via a quantitative approach, data were collected using a questionnaire survey from 88 apparel manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka, and a PLS structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings indicate that both internal and external social sustainability practices positively impact all sustainable performance, i.e., economic, environmental, and social.