Public Management TQM -- Total Quality Management

Public Management TQM -- Total Quality Management in the Workforce -- Fad or Fascinating Management tool -- or both? Total Quality Management has the unfortunate distinction of being an excellent management system that bears a name that sounds more like a trademark than what it is, a philosophy of management that is both psychologically astute and scientific in its nature.

Rather than pointing fingers at individual employees, it encourages managers to take responsibility for their staff as a whole and implement solutions to clearly defined and remediable problems, thus producing real results rather than mere corporate reshuffling of staff.

From a definitional, knowledge perspective, the concept of total quality management or TQM, stresses that quantitative or scientific measurement by managers "should be used as a helpful tool, not a weapon." (Hunicke, 2001) From the level of comprehension, one can, by using TQM, increase one's understanding as a manager of how processes are operating with an organization by asking where did the process break down, rather than taking the punitive perspective of asking, for instance, 'why did sales factors decrease during the last quarter?' Instead of targeting individuals, managers should be, according to the TQM perspective, looking at specific factors such as "How many delays were encountered in entering or filling customer orders? How often was the warehouse out of stock? How much equipment downtime occurred on second shift? What were the costs (and causes) of engineering changes?" (Hunicke, 2001) Thus, to apply TQM, to one's own workforce, one must listen and learn to ask the right questions.

Yes, TQM might seem to be a management fad. And in some ways, one could characterize it as such in the sense that it is a brand name or a label that adapts other existing effective management styles and structures into its form. But this does not mean it should be distained. True, to analyze its philosophy of applying quantitative strategies to qualitative or subjective management goals such as improved production or employee attitudes, TQM does have considerable overlap with Jack Welch's Six Sigma school of management.

But although Six Sigma may have a different structured or brand named trademark of buzzword verbs, to engage in a synthesis of these two different programs is certainly possible. Ultimately most successful management programs deploy at least something similar to the core TQM philosophy of management. TQM stresses that the areas being measured by management must be important to the customers. Each measurement must be part of a defined and documented process. What is being measured in each measurement should be clearly defined and feasibly remedied by managers and supervisors.

Also, when engaging in an evaluation, TQM stresses amongst its core principles that the employees in a TQM organization must "believe they can do something to streamline or improve the process; knowledge and authority to make changes," and "rust that their actions will be focused on the process, not the people involved." (Hunicke, 2001).