Public Management, TQM, and Quality Improvement: Toward a Contingency Strategy

Abstract

The spectrum of opinions on TQM applications in government agencies presently stretches from exaggerated claims regarding its universal applicability and potency to more "agnostic" reservations related to its unspecified or undeveloped theoretical linkages to outright dismissals spawned by its alleged naivete in the face of organizational realpolitik. Marshalling evidence culled from TQM, organizational-behavior, bureaucratic-politics, and public-policy literatures, the purposes of this heuristic essay are threefold: to identify those factors most likely to foster successful applications of TQM in government agencies; to suggest what proponents must yet clarify, refine, or amend in their thinking before TQM can be consistently and confidently applied within this context; and to offer a propositional inventory suitable for advancing a contingency theory of TQM applications in government organizations. Framing the analysis is Frederickson's (1971) typology of basic organizational processes.