Human resources and total quality management: case studies in Brazilian companies

This paper presents an exploratory research carried out in four manufacturing companies (large to medium size) located in the central region of São Paulo State, Brazil. The research was conducted aiming at characterising the companies in regard to quality and human resource management practices. The results show that human resource management may co‐operate with the success of total quality programmes, emphasising the competitive advantages which can be created from this partnership, namely organisational learning, organisational culture management and team‐based management.