Measuring Productivity in Federal Agencies: Does Total Quality Management Make a Difference?

Abstract

In the 1980s, during the Reagan and Bush administrations, many federal agencies embarked on journeys toward Total Quality Management. The Government Performance and Results Act of 1993 then shifted the focus of federal agencies to "reinventing" government. Are these events evidence that management is faddish? Is TQM a fad whose time has passed? Is there any difference between agencies that did implement TQM and those that did not? Is it time to abandon TQM?

A case study of TQM implementation in the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) analyzed the effects of TQM in an agency that is continuing that emphasis (Mani, 1995). This paper expands the IRS case study by adding an analysis of data from other federal agencies. The Federal Productivity Measurement System (FPMS), administered through the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, reports the results of approximately 2,500 output indicators. I analyze these data, provided by individual agencies and agencies' assessments of their own efforts to implement TQM, to identify relationships between TQM implementation and federal productivity.

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