Hypothesis 2: Long-term TQM firms outperform short-term TQM firms
The discussion of diffusion of innovations gives rise to the expectation that TQM would produce the best results for homophilous adopters, those with experiences, condition and cultures resembling those of existing TQM practitioners. Since TQM originally emerged from manufacturing environments, and because TQM remains more widely disseminated among manufacturers, manufacturing adopters should outperform service adopters. To some extent, such a finding could result from the time differences just discussed, since manufacturers have a longer history with TQM. The third hypothesis predicts that, independent of time effects, manufacturers outperform service firms among TQM adopters.