AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF QUALITY TOOLS IMPACT ON FINANCIAL PERFORMANCES: EVIDENCE FROM SERBIA

This study examines the impact of quality tools on financial performances using a sample of 119Serbian industrial firms. Factor and reliability analysis are used to show that quality tools may beclassified into three primary categories: quality tools for reviewing current conditions (for decisionmaking), quality tools for analyzing current conditions (for problems solving) and quality tools forproduction planning and control (for improvement). The relationships between these 3 groups ofquality tools and financial performances were tested using the stepwise regression analysis. It wasconcluded that the first group of quality tools (quality tools for reviewing current condition, e.g. fordecision making) has significant impact on most of the dimensions of financial performances, whilefor the second and third group there is no statistical support. Influence of the first group of qualitytools on sales revenue is statistically significant at a p<0.01 significance level while it`s influence oncompany profit and total revenue per employee are statistically significant at p<0.05 significancelevel. The model ranged from 4% to 7%.