Culture of Apathy

Culture of Apathy

Quality Management Practices in Public Sector Organizations

Richard A. Wehner

PMAN639

The following is an overview of the operational differences between large private sector businesses and public (government) agencies where quality is the issue. Focus will be on the cultural challenges presented by the structure of the organization and the prevailing mindset that is the result. It is the belief of this author that by presenting an illustrative and comparative analysis, that institutional differences and the inclusion of the concept of perception yield a reality that is different from the popular belief that public sector organizations have little concern for the quality of their service.

Contents

I. Introduction 3

II. Lit review and synthesis 4

III. Why quality is a concern. 5

IV. How do they get there? 6

V. Where they differ. 8

VI. Comparative analysis 9

VII. Implications of research 11

VIII. Implications for management 12

IX. Summation and conclusions 13

X. Appendices 15

XI. References 16

I. Introduction

The concept of what comprises quality can differ not only from industry to industry, but also from business to business, or even executive to executive. Foster (2010) makes an astute observation with his statement that “one of the problems with quality efforts has been that they tend to be too internally oriented”. Like beauty, quality is often in the eye of the beholder. Nowhere is this more evident than in public sector organizations, primarily governmental services. Unlike “for profit” companies that comprise the private sector of industry, public sector agencies cannot rely on traditional benchmark and metric measuring devices to determine the quality of the products and services they produce. The customer base of governmental services is predisposed to be unhappy or distrustful of the organization which makes accurate assessment of quality more challenging.

The structure of these organizations creates...