Transforming to quality organizations: the city of Madison experience

This paper describes preliminary results of on-going study of quality management in the city government of Madison, Wisconsin funded by the National Science Foundation 'Transformation to Quality Organizations' program. Given the proven effectiveness of TQM, the critical role of the public sector, and the paucity of studies addressing best practices in the transformation to quality organizations, particularly in the public sector, the study's primary objective is to generate principles to operate transformations to quality organizations in local government. The conceptual framework underlying the study is presented as well as one component of a multi-faceted research methodology used to collect primary data to test the model: the development, administration and results of a comprehensive employee questionnaire survey. Conclusions and future steps are discussed.