TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Total Quality Management (TQM) is a management approach which seeks to establish zero defects in any part of an organization, and which uses teams, worker empowerment and creative problem solving to accomplish this aggressive goal. Originally developed for the manufacturing sector, TQM programs are now found in many different types of organizations, including marketing, production, finance and customer support. A TQM program encompasses all aspects of an organization's operations, including its hiring and promotional practices, the way the company itself is structured, and the culture that the company develops. In some cases, TQM programs are implemented in organizations that already have some quality emphasis; in other cases, TQM programs are laid into organizations totally lacking a commitment to quality. The way in which TQM is implemented can be critical in whether the program is an eventual success or failure. This research considers the advantages and disadvantages of TQM and its applicability to the public sector.

As its name suggests, Total Quality Management is an attempt to maximize quality within and throughout an organization. It requires that various departments be seen as "internal" customers as well as considering the needs and requirements of external customers (the company's traditional customers). By combining techniques such as just-in-time inventory (JIT) c

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QM principles will be viewed with even greater suspicion by employees. There can also be a high loss of productivity as employees adapt to the new procedures, with the result that weak businesses may be pushed beyond the brink through a wholesale introduction of TQM. While the incremental approach solves both of the disadvantages of the retrofit and the startup approach, it has strong disadvantages of its own. Companies which implement TQM as a way of forestalling disaster may find that they do not have enough time to fully implement an incremental TQM system, with the result that the company cannot be saved before it runs out of capital and goes out of business (McAbe & Wilkison, 1998, p. 20). The incremental approach also has the problem of becoming more important than the overall system, with the result that the TQM project often becomes more important than TQM procedures. In this situation, the system may never be fully implemented, and a bureaucracy may arise to support the implementation rather than the overall quality aspect of the company. IMPACT ON ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE Both incremental and retrofit change projects begin from a similar place: an already existing organizational culture. In incremental change project
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Approximate Word count = 3433
Approximate Pages = 14 (250 words per page)

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