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The importance of total quality management and the increasing emphasis on knowledge management have caught great attention from researchers and practitioners. The linkage between them has also been recognized through the past few years. However, researches related to the connecting issue are rare and incomplete so far. Not only the research methods but also the frameworks are not constructive enough and lack of evidences.
This study tries to confirm the efforts and contributions of both academic and business community on TQM and KM issues, and further explores the relationship between the two management types and practices.

The study is employed on the basis of discussing the critical factors of TQM and the KM value chain activities. Qualitative research method – case study, as well as statistical analysis via simple investigation are two of the main research methods. Several propositions about the relationships between TQM and KM, and about the result of their interaction are proposed. The first is that TQM critical factors can work as the guidance of KM practical directions secondly KM value chain activities can be executed as an action program for TQM critical factors. The final proposition is that there exist multiple effects between TQM and KM. These propositions will hopefully be the reference for the organizations that are interested in TQM and KM introduction and for those that are making decisions on which management type to choose from.

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