July 2002
Volume 9 • Number 3

Contents

The Role of Quality Tools in Improving Satisfaction with Government
by S. Thomas Foster Jr., Boise State University, Larry W. Howard, Middle Tennessee State University, and Patrick Shannon, Boise State University

This article presents the results of a study in a city in the western United States. The authors found that city employees believed that quality knowledge was necessary for improving quality. Results show that departmental leadership was positively associated with teamwork, process improvement, and employee satisfaction. Quality knowledge, if followed up with application, can be effective in improving processes. Leadership is necessary to the development of quality tools knowledge. Therefore, both leadership and teamwork are important contextual variables for quality improvement in the public sector.

Key words: leadership, organizational context, quality management, quality tools, teamwork

INTRODUCTION

Much has been written about infrastructural and environmental variables in quality improvement in business (Adam 1994; Saraph, Benson, and Schroeder 1989; Flynn, Schroeder, and Sakakibara 1995). Most of this research has focused on antecedents to outcomes such as market share, return on investment, customer satisfaction, and self-reported measures of quality improvement. Interestingly, there is much disagreement among these research models regarding the variables leading to positive quality outcomes. This has led some authors to adopt the contingency-based view that organizational quality improvement can occur in a variety of ways—depending upon organizational context (Mallick, Ritzman, and Safizadeh 1999).

While there is an established quality management literature in business, there is relatively little relating to quality improvement in government. Much of the existing literature is anecdotal (Foster and Viano 1996). As a result, there is little understanding of the variables leading to quality improvement in government.

There are significant differences in environmental variables of business vs. government. A primary difference is the lack of profit in government. W. Edwards Deming (1986) often alluded to the profit issue as a differentiator resulting in necessarily different choices in quality improvement methods between government and business. For example, infrastructural, labor-related practices differ in government. Employees have more job security in government than in business. To compensate for this, government wages often lag the private sector. Government entities often have a difficult time identifying the customer. In business, the customer often ends up owning the product. Some authors have posited that the customer is the “one who pays the bills” (Evans and Lindsay 1999). However, who is the customer in government? Is it the taxpayer, the elected leader (for example, executive branch), the legislature (they allocate resources), or the individuals who directly access government services (such as the licensee to a motor-vehicle division)? In fact, government entities may have a number of customers who cannot be defined with the simple internal and external designations.

Although there is limited research in government quality management, the need for more research is great. There are a number of reasons for this. First, demands are increasing for government services, while budgets are stagnant or decreasing. Therefore, process simplification is needed to respond to increasing demands. Second, there is increasing competitive pressure on government service providers as pressure mounts to privatize government services. Third, leaders in government have moved to improve and reinvent government. Finally, government employees are internally motivated to provide service that is on par with the private sector.

It is not clear, however, that quality practices can be transferred from the private sector to the public sector. While basic quality tools are used commonly in industry, research has not demonstrated the efficacy of these tools in improving government service. In fact, Deming cautioned against applying modern quality management approaches to government (Deming 1986).

This article presents results from a study performed in a city government. The city in question had been implementing teams and quality improvement tools over a number of years. Quality tools, while ubiquitous in the practitioner literature, have received little attention in research. The primary research question is, “Were the applications of quality tools effective in improving quality-related outcomes in this city government.” As a result of this study and analysis, the authors propose a model of quality tool usage in government. The primary contribution of this article is to examine the role of quality tools in effective implementation of quality improvement in a government setting.

Return to top