IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nsu/apasro/296.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Convergence of the policies for promoting total quality management in the public administrations of Balkan states - European Union Member S tates

Author

Listed:
  • MATEI, Ani
  • SĂVULESCU, Carmen

Abstract

In the past three decades, total quality management (TQM) has been appreciated as "fundamental modality in view to improve the activity in the public and private sectors" (Boyne and Walker, 2002, 1). For the time being, in public administrations, we witness an extension of the policies for promoting TQM, although the experiences have not always been positive. The European Administrative Space (EAS) incorporates TQM, in different manners at national level, taking into consideration its recognised impact on the efficiency of public administration, one of EAS fundamental principles (Zurga, 2008, 39-49). In the context of analysing EAS evolution, the administrative convergence will also comprise the convergence of TQM policies. In fact, the field literature (Hackman and Wageman, 1995) reveals, in the context of national TQM policy-making, the concepts of "Convergent validity" and "Discriminant validity", reflecting "the degree to which the version of TQM promulgated by the founders and observed in organizational practice share a common set of assumptions and prescriptions" (Hackman and Wageman, 1995, 318-319). By a comparative analysis on TQM policies in the national public administrations of Balkan states, EU Member States: Greece, Cyprus, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania, the current paper aims to reveal the level of their convergence as well as the theoretical consistency of the conceptual and practical framework for TQM assertion. The comparative analysis will be based on a comprehensive vision on TQM, provided by Dean and Bowen (1994), Boyne and Walker (2002), namely its approach should be characterised on own principles, practices and techniques, grouped on customer focus, continuous improvement and team work (Boyne and Walker, 2002, 4-5). The tradition on promoting TQM in public administration in the above-mentioned states is relatively recent: since 1990s - Cyprus, since 1995 - Greece and Slovenia, since 2000 -Bulgaria and Romania. However, in the context of the EU membership and EAS enlargement to the Balkans, their efforts for promoting TQM in public administration are marked by concrete actions, reflecting differentiated degrees of convergence. The current study will refer briefly to absolute convergence - assessed in relation to the founders' conception on TQM and comprehensively to the relative convergence - assessed by comparing the activities concerning TQM in the states under review .

Suggested Citation

  • MATEI, Ani & SĂVULESCU, Carmen, 2011. "Convergence of the policies for promoting total quality management in the public administrations of Balkan states - European Union Member S tates," Apas Papers 296, Academic Public Administration Studies Archive - APAS.
  • Handle: RePEc:nsu:apasro:296
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.apas.admpubl.snspa.ro/handle/2010/304
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. ARTENE Adela Suzana & MEDINSCHI Silvia, 2013. "From Traditional Recruiting To E-Recruiting in Public Organizations," Anale. Seria Stiinte Economice. Timisoara, Faculty of Economics, Tibiscus University in Timisoara, vol. 0, pages 28-33, May.
    2. Vasileva, Elka, 2013. "Управление чрез тотално качество в български контекст (Total quality management in bulgarian context) [Total quality management in bulgarian context]," MPRA Paper 62567, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Convergence; quality management; Balkan states; European Union Member States;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nsu:apasro:296. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Ani Matei (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/fasnsro.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.