An Empirical Study Into Qualifications and Skills of Quality Management Practitioners in Contemporary Organizations: Results From a Global Survey and Agenda for Future Research

Although quality is everyone's responsibility, one of the key members for the execution of quality in contemporary organizations is quality management practitioners. The purpose of this article is to investigate the qualifications and skills of quality management practitioners in various organizations at a global level and how these vary across online survey was sent out to 1500 subject matter experts who are working in their respective organizations in roles, such as quality managers, quality directors, and quality engineers. A total of 336 responses representing 46 countries and six continents were collated over a 22-week period. The study reveals that nearly 37% of quality management practitioners have never undertaken a quality management course at the university level. Moreover, it was surprising to observe that more than 40% of quality engineers and managers who participated in the global study had less than a week of training on quality management. Another major finding of the study was that more than 60% of these professionals specializing in quality management have never studied quality engineering in their university education. The study further reports the top three challenges quality management practitioners face in contemporary organizations.