April 2000
Volume 7 • Number 2

Contents

Recent years have seen an explosion in the use of quality management disciplines in all fields. Quality management professionals assign great importance to an understanding of customers and suppliers in any complex discipline or enterprise. In education, planners of educational change efforts need a model for understanding customer and supplier interactions in order to improve the success rate of educational reform. With major resources being poured into educational reform initiatives, it is important to determine whether or not these investments are likely to pay off through successful implementations.

In this study, the definitions of customers and suppliers in education were explored using a Delphi survey of two cohorts of education and business professionals. Differences between the cohorts were used to contrast the two perspectives. What emerged was the necessity of discussing all stakeholders in education as both customer and supplier. This contrasted with the business model of stakeholders serving either customer or supplier roles. These results are translated into a systems model and rubric for analyzing educational stakeholders to assess the likely relationships among customers and suppliers in any particular educational change initiative. Expected pitfalls of improper customer-supplier identification are discussed.

Key words: educational reform, rubric, stakeholders, systems theory

by RICHARD E. BIEHL, WALDEN UNIVERSITY

INTRODUCTION

The last 15 years have seen an explosion in knowledge and activity throughout the global business community related to quality management and the role of customers and suppliers in determining the effectiveness of the processes and procedures that comprise any complex business system. Demands and trends for school reform have pulled that movement into the education arena.

As part of the growth of awareness and action for educational reform in the 1980s, the American Society for Quality (ASQ) formed an Education Division of quality professionals working in the field of quality, but having interests in education and educational reform. In a division newsletter column, division president Greg Hutchins (1996) issued a challenge to quality professionals: “Education is a world unto itself. It has its own distinct culture, messages, processes, concerns, and attitudes. We need more people in divisional leadership who can broach the world of business and education–people who know the secret handshakes between the two.” This research project is an attempt to forge a partial bridge between these two diverse disciplines.