Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Click here to sign up for SAGE Journal Email Alerts today!

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
The American Review of Public Administration
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Durant, R. F.
Right arrow Articles by Wilson, L. A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

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

Robert F. Durant

The University of Baltimore

Laura A. Wilson

The University of Baltimore

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.

The American Review of Public Administration, Vol. 23, No. 3, 215-245 (1993)
DOI: 10.1177/027507409302300303
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?