ABSTRACT
Total quality management (TQM) has had a major impact on business management practices, and has been adopted by such high profile corporations as General Motors, Motorola, and Xerox. In its unmodified or orthodox form, TQM is strikingly ill suited to the government environment. The use of TQM in government has several major problems: insufficient modification for services; insensitivity to the problems of defining governmental customers; inappropriate emphasis on inputs and processes; and demands for top-level intensity that can rarely be met by the governmental culture. TQM was originally designed for routine processes such as manufacturing, yet most government agencies produce services rather than products. Orthodox TQM depends on an extremely strong organizational culture with an almost single-minded commitment to quality. A common problem with the implementation of productivity improvement innovations such as TQM is that many organizations implement them at a token level rather than fully committing themselves to success.
