TQM and Excellence Models in Public Sector in Context of Sustainability: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This article focuses on Total Quality Management and Excellence Models (TQM and EM) in public sector research, revealing an analysis of existing literature in this area. Considering that the majority of publications on TQM and EM encompass the private sector and the sustainability subject becomes increasingly important, there is a need for advanced research on literature that assesses the interaction between quality models and sustainability in the public sector. The bibliometric analysis method is applied to display the current knowledge in the field, the results accomplished by previous studies, the most current trends and existing gaps in the literature. Retrieving 1677 articles from Web of Science between 1992 and 2024, this paper applies VOS viewer to detect the conceptual structure of the domain, to analyse the evolution of publications in time, highly cited literature and relevant journals. The results show publication outputs of the most cited works and authors, journals and research fields, the research trends and the most used keywords. This paper provides scholars with a compilation of the TQM and EM in the public sector research field and proposals for a new contribution on this topic. It helps to fill the literature gap regarding the lack of studies on the subject of study. There was interest for this field from 1992 but the importance of sustainability aspects is acknowledged in recent research. On the other hand, a specific interest for these models was identified in education and health care services.