Total Quality Environmental Management Toward Sustainability: Need and Implementation in Libyan Food Industry

Abstract:

mplementing Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) improves environment, quality, sustainability, and reduces food risks. TQEM has emerged from integrating Environmental Management System (EMS) into the Total Quality Management (TQM). In this paper, an investigation is presented to study the current situation, and identify the barriers and motivations for implementing TQEM towards sustainability for Libyan food industry (LFI). A qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews was adopted to collect the data with general, operation, and quality managers in LFI. The findings show that LFI are still in the early stage of quality and a little concern about the EMS and TQM has been given. There are five key barriers and five motivations for implementing TQEM in LFI. The paper contributes to the existing knowledge by investigating the implementation of TQEM in different context (i.e., Arab/North African) to the one that the quality and environmental theory developed in. Also, the paper studies all barriers and motivations of TQM and EMS implementation compared with previous studies focusing on few barriers and motivations. The paper provides ideas and insights for LFI managers to develop their implementation in TQEM while also considering quality and environmental issues.

• Periodical: Key Engineering Materials (Volume 572)
• Pages: 84-89
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/KEM.572.84
• Online since: September 2013
• Authors: Abdelsalam Saad, Dai Zhong Su, Phillipa Marsh, Zhong Min Wu
• Keywords: Environmental Management System (EMS), Food Industry, Libya, Total Quality Environmental Management, Total Quality Management

References

[1] Hsieh, Y. C. (2012) Hotel companies' environmental policies and practices: a content analysis of their web pages, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 24 (1), p.97 – 121.

DOI: 10.1108/095961112

[2] GEMI (1994) Environmental Reporting in a Total Quality Management Framework. GEMI, Washington.

[3] Khadour, L. (2010) Total Quality Environmental Management (TQEM) Framework towards Sustainability (UK Novated D&B Principal Contractors), Ph.D. thesis, Nottingham Trent University.

[4] Narasimhan, R., Schoenherr, T. (2012) The effects of integrated supply management practices and environmental management practices on relative competitive quality advantage, International Journal of Production Research, 40 (4), p.1185–1201.

DOI: 10.1080/00207543.2011.555785

[5] Wiengarten, F. and Pagell, M. (2012) The importance of quality management for the success of environmental management initiatives, Int. J. Production Economics, 140 (1), p.407–415.

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpe.2012.06.024

[6] Berry, J.M. (2002) Validity and reliability issues in elite interviewing, Political Science and Politics, 35 (4), pp.679-682.

DOI: 10.1017/s1049096502001166