QUALITY AND PUBLIC SERVICES

Abstract

The issue of quality of service is becoming increasingly important in the public service as a result of new approaches that are being adopted to management, notably the development of contract‐based management. The argument of this article is that the concept of quality is a particularly difficult one for the public services, because of problems of information asymmetries. The first sections of the article are concerned with the meaning of the concept of quality and the problems of managing quality in the service sector and the public service in particular. The central argument of the article is that there are important problems of information asymmetries between service providers and service consumers. Four different situations of differential information availability are distinguished. The article argues that the issue of quality in the public service is an inherently political one.