Leadership for excellence in the Portuguese municipalities: Critical success factors, measurements and improvement strategies

Abstract

There is a large consensus in the literature that leadership is the most critical aspect for successful implementation of TQM (Dale et al. , 1997; Deming, 1986; Oakland, 1999; Senge, 1990; Zairi, 1995, 1999) and, ultimately, to achieve organizational excellence. Therefore, leadership is the prime aspect of Kanji's Business Excellence Model (KBEM) (Kanji, 1998). Given the criticality of leadership, a new model for measuring leadership excellence was developed (Kanji & Sá, 2001), based on an extensive literature review. This model, which expands the concept of leadership embedded in KBEM, was empirically tested and validated in the Portuguese municipalities. A brief analysis of key leadership responsibilities in implementing TQM initiatives (Dale et al. , 1997; Darling, 1999; Dering, 1998; Prabhu & Robson, 2000a, 2000b; Senge, 1990; Zairi, 1999) points to the need to develop new leadership profiles in the public sector (Hartley & Allison, 2000; Korac-Kakabadse & Korac-Kakabadse, 1998; Morgan & Murgatroyd, 1994; Rago, 1996; Skelcher, 1992) and in the local government in particular (Gabris et al. , 2000; Gaster, 1996; Jones, 1999; West et al. , 1993). The leadership model developed incorporates the critical success factors thus identified. Based on these constructs, measurement scales were created and the resulting questionnaire administered to the Portuguese municipalities. Eighty-five municipalities participated in the study. The paper reports the main results of this application, which broadly confirm the structure of proposed model and demonstrate that the leadership roles and competencies identified have, in fact, a positive impact on leadership excellence. From the findings, possible improvement strategies are discussed.