Is quality management appropriate for public leisure services?

Abstract

There can be little debate that there has been an increasing focus on service quality within UK public leisure services which has resulted in the introduction of quality management and its associated techniques. Introduced as the result of the emergence of a customer focus among public leisure facility managers and in response to government legislation, the use of quality management techniques has become widespread throughout the UK public leisure sector. What has not been established is the appropriateness of quality management for public services, given its inherent commercialism. The use of quality management techniques in UK public leisure facilities raises two concerns, Firstly, there is evidence to suggest that the inherent commercialism of quality management and its associated techniques has led to an undermining of the social objectives of public leisure facilities. Secondly, in order to deliver high quality services, public leisure facility managers have focused on the expectations of paying customers, to the exclusion of other customer groups. Although these two weakness would suggest that quality management is therefore an inappropriate strategy for the management of public leisure facilities, it is apparent that the impact of these weaknesses is minimized by the activities of other sections of the public leisure service - primarily by community work. Secondly, it is clear that the best value legislative framework requires public leisure providers to move beyond a mere focus on paying customers. Thus when leisure services are viewed as a whole, quality management appears an appropriate strategy for the management of public leisure facilities.