ABSTRACT
As fiscal stress spirals, as public faith in government institutions diminishes, and as “customer satisfaction” assumes Talmudic proportions among private-sector management consultants, calls routinely abound for applications of total quality management (TQM) in government agencies. Witness, for example, how President Bush’s Executive Order 12637 wrought federal quality- and productivity-improvement programs in virtually every major executive branch department or agency (Master, 1991; Carr and Littman, 1990). Likewise, TQM initiatives grow increasingly common in state agencies, with departments in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Arkansas, California, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania leading the charge (Carr and Littman, 1990). Meanwhile, at the local level, nearly 50 govemment-wide county and municipal TQM initiatives are now under way in the United States (Carr and Littman, 1990).
