The Impact of Total Quality Management on Competitive Advantage by Mediating Role of Innovation Performance of Exporting CompaniesIn the Garment Industry

Today, achieving competitive advantage is regarded as one of the most important first steps for companies to enter global markets and expand their international operations and succeed in these markets. On the other hand, with the increasing internationalization of the global economy, the focus on competitive advantage has increased. In today's world, the development of the apparel market, on the one hand, and the increased competitiveness between apparel companies and the expectation of customers, on the other hand, have encouraged these companies to improve the quality of their goods and gain competitive advantage in today's evolving markets. Take action. The present study aimed to study the impact of comprehensive quality management on competitive advantage through the mediating role of innovation performance (incremental and fundamental innovation performance) among apparel exporting companies. The research is applied in terms of purpose and in terms of research method and data collection, it is descriptive-survey type. The statistical population consisted of active apparel exporting companies with 250 standard questionnaires which were used for face validity and Cronbach's alpha coefficient for its reliability, Simple random sampling was distributed among companies, out of which only 214 questionnaires were analyzed. The covariance-based structural equation modeling (LISREL) approach has been used to investigate hypotheses and confirm the conceptual model of research. The results show that total quality management has a significant positive effect on competitive advantage, incremental and fundamental innovation performance, Also, incremental and fundamental innovation performance has a significant positive effect on competitive advantage.