ATTEMPTING TQM IN ORGANIZATIONAL STAFF AREAS - TQM AS MANAGERIAL INNOVATION IN CORPORATE PUBLIC AFFAIRS

The scholarship on total quality management (TQM) has provided little conceptual or pragmatic guidance with respect to the management of its adoption and diffusion throughout the organization. This dearth is especially pronounced with respect to the activities of organizational units which do not produce products to be purchased by customers in the consumer marketplace. This paper describes an exploratory research study which analyzed TQM attempts in one of these units, Public Affairs (PA) Using concepts from the scholarship on managerial innovation, the research focused on the factors which inhibit/facilitate TQM attempts in corporate PA.