Total Quality Management at Virginia Commonwealth University: An urban university struggles with the realities of TQM

The chief administrators at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) began formally to explore Total Quality Management (TQM) during the summer of 1991. What they found initially was both surprising and revealing. A major affiliated division of the university, which operates autonomously, had already undertaken a large-scale TQM effort. Early discussions also revealed a core of faculty who were already teaching, conducting research, and providing services to the business community, as well as state and local government agencies, in the TQM arena. These discoveries gave additional impetus for the administrators to pursue a study of TQM. The unfolding of the study and related activities undertaken to date provide insights into theprocess of implementing TQM at a major university.