Total Quality Management and the Public Sector

Beginning of article

INTRODUCTION

This article provides the authors' preliminary conclusions concerning the maturity of Total Quality Management (TQM)1 in the public sector. They define the public sector as all primary employers of Master of Public Administration (MPA) graduates, including non-profit and quasi-public organizations and agencies as well as governmental units. Their long-term research objective is to determine how TQM should be addressed in Master of Public Administration curricula.

This is the third report on research that began over two years ago but can still be classified as in the pre-experimental stage. The first two reports were presented as papers at the Fifteenth and …