Can Total Quality Management Translate Environmental Determinants into Environmental Performance? Evidence from Cameroonian Manufacturing Companies

This study integrates institutional theory (INT) and the resource-based view (RBV) to investigate the mediating role of total quality management (TQM) in the relationship between environmental determinants (ED) and environmental performance (EP) in the Cameroonian manufacturing sector, an African emerging economy where sustainable manufacturing is increasingly important. Customer expectation (CE), policy and regulation (PR), and competitive pressure (CP) were identified as environmental drivers, TQM as the mediator, and environmental performance as the outcome variable in a proposed mediation model. Data were collected from 447 manufacturing personnel, including senior executives, middle managers, lower managers, and supervisors and analyzed using SmartPLS 4. The findings demonstrate that environmental performance is moderately associated with CE, PR, and CP. While CP has no relationship with TQM, CE and PR have a moderate influence. Additionally, TQM has a moderate relationship with environmental performance and plays a minor mediating role in the relationships between PR and environmental performance as well as between CE and environmental performance. TQM does not, however, act as a mediator in the relationship between CP and environmental performance. The findings establish TQM as an organizational capacity for linking specific environmental factors into environmental results. The study provides context-specific insights into how external institutional pressures can be translated into environmental performance in an African emerging economy by focusing on manufacturing firms in Cameroon. This broadens the scope of sustainability and quality-management research beyond primarily developed-country contexts. The study’s cross-sectional design and dependence on self-reported data from Cameroonian manufacturing companies may restrict the capacity to draw conclusions about causality and the applicability of the results to other industries and African economies.