Determinants on Quality Certification in the Portuguese Municipalities

Abstract

Over the last decades it has been produced one of the biggest changes in the history of Portuguese Public Administration. This change process was anchored on the concept of administrative modernization, involving aims of simplicity, efficiency and transparency in order to provide better services to citizens-clients. These goals can be attained through approaches of Total Quality Management, a concept focused on customer’s needs, the involvement and empowerment of teams and the philosophy of continuous improvement. This paper makes an analysis of the progress held in Portugal one of the ways to implement a Quality Management system, embodied in a certification process. The research questions relates to the perception of the existence of differences in the certification process option by the Portuguese authorities, using the proportions comparison tests and the logistic regression estimation. From among the main findings of the performed analysis, we highlight the strong regional and local asymmetries, as well as the influence of population density, as an explanatory variable of  the bet  of  the  authorities in quality certification.