ABSTRACT. This article moves beyond the narrowdiscussion of the applicability of Total QualityManagement to the university which has amountedto a debate over whether business has something toteach the university about customers and satisfaction.The article goes at the matter from a different direc-tion as it investigates what business can learn from theuniversity about quality.

Perhaps John Stuart Mill best captured why somepeople find the ideal of attaining satisfactionrepugnant. Said Mill, “It is better to be a humanbeing dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better tobe Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”1

Worlds collide when Total Quality Management,with its agenda of creating a population of satis-fied customers,2 comes to the university with apopulation presumably of dissatisfied Socrateses.3

However much one can imagine these entitiesbeing permanently at odds, one can also inquireinto what their proper domains are and how theymight coexist. In this regard, I wish to establishtwo claims. My first claim is that TQM’s goal ofattaining customer satisfaction is inadequategenerally as a moral philosophy and hence unableto guide the university in its efforts to contributeto the moral education of its students. My secondclaim is that TQM, which strives for quality andguages it with customer satisfaction, can learn

something from universities which demonstratewell that we secure quality as a byproduct of acomplex network of values and value-ladenactivity. Put differently, TQM cannot assistuniversities with moral education, but TQMdoes have something to learn from the univer-sity about quality and its connection with activityin a moral community.

I.

Certainly TQM addresses a primary problem ofethics and moral education, namely, how weshould treat people. And TQM offers a clear andunambiguous solution; we should satisfy them.Although this advice is usually stated in termsof customer satisfaction, with “customer” under-stood in the usual business sense,4 it is oftenqualified by broadening the notion of customerto include those people whom our work affects.5

So let us think in these more general terms forthe moment. This approach of satisfying peopledoes rectify some of the ill treatment whichpeople encounter. In the university, students aredissatisfied when someone at the cashier’s officeor the cafeteria treats them rudely or withdisrespect. They are likewise dissatisfied whenprofessors treat them in these ways or whenprofessors simply fail to take account of theirinterests, like those of having their assignmentsgraded in a timely fashion or of having the sig-nificance of the subject for their lives made clear.If we satisfy these students, we correct theseproblems.

So, with a general commitment to satisfyingpeople, TQM instructs the university on thecorrect treatment of people. But as soon as theuniversity embarks on fulfilling its responsibility

Some Dissatisfaction withSatisfaction: Universities,Values, and Quality

Vincent Luizzi

Journal of Business Ethics 25: 359–364, 2000.© 2000 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Vincent Luizzi is Professor and Chair of Philosophy atSouthwest Texas State University and AssociateMunicipal Court Judge for the City of San Marcos. Heis the author of A Case for Legal Ethics: Legal Ethicsas a Source for a Universal Ethic which SUNY Presspublished in 1993. The work brings out how the devel-opmental approach lawyers bring to ethics has signifi-cance for constructing a general ethical theory which inturn informs business and the professions.

to contribute to the moral education of itsstudents with this teaching of TQM, the uni-versity abdicates its responsibility. The universityin effect adopts for purposes of moral educationand development an ideology of the businessworld for effective marketing. (TQM is predi-cated on the notion that, if we aim to satisfycustomers, we must rely on the marketers toascertain the wants of customers.) And the uni-versity, through its unreflective endorsement ofTQM’s teaching, provides not a moral educationbut, in effect, an indoctrination; TQM offers noalternatives for how we should treat people andknown deficiencies with the only alternative ofsatisfying people are not countenanced.

Put differently, an essential ingredient of theeducational process is an ongoing presentationand critical examination of views about moralright and wrong.6 Moral philosophy investigateshow such considerations as happiness, fairness,equality, dignity, and utility figure into anadequate approach to morality. The universityeither fails to facilitate this process and investi-gation when it adopts TQM complete with itsmoral teachings, or the university puts inself inan absurd position when it rightfully opens itsdoors to inquiring about the nature of moralityand at the same time adopts TQM which closesthe door to considering further how we shouldtreat people.

And there are other good reasons why uni-versities should not adopt TQM in so compre-hensive a fashion that it offers a glib answer toall of the central issues of ethics. Many of thesecriticisms hinge on our using “customer” in itsnormal business sense but sometimes apply withequal force to the bloated generic use which wehave focused on to this point. Whether or notpurveyors of TQM intend us to use “customer”in some very general sense, they cannot controlthe ways in which its standard meaning influenceshow we think about people whom we callcustomers. Our normal and usual discourse aboutcustomers is exclusively about people who arebuying goods and services in the business world,so this use will always tug strongly for exclusivity.It is therefore relevant to investigate the short-comings of a moral theory which seeks customersatisfaction in this narrower sense.

Let us turn now to this next batch of consid-erations about why a university should not turnto TQM for the moral dimension of its educa-tional mission. When we draw on the businessmodel of treating people like customers, weobscure a primary goal of fostering the develop-ment of mature, moral agents. This obfuscationcan take a number of forms all of which areobjectionable. If we draw on this business modelwithout realizing that ultimately what we areseeking is moral treatment of others, we are crit-icizable for our ignorance. If we draw on thisbusiness model by thinking that we can best getpeople to become a little more moral by nottelling them that that is what we are trying toaccomplish, then we are criticizable for manip-ulating others which itself is wrong. If we drawon this business model because we believe thatpeople like to think of themselves as agentswhose primary reality is the business world andto identify with business types rather than withmoral agents, we are criticizable not only formaking this assumption without evidence butalso for pandering to the interests of people whoputatively have little regard for their identity asmoral agents. And if we draw on this businessmodel thinking that the people with whom wedeal at work are identical with customers becausethey share common features, we are criticizablefor committing the logical error of false analogy.Although we can find similarities between cus-tomers and, say, patients, for example, the com-parison fails to guide our thinking in an adequatefashion given very significant dissimilarities. Inthe matter of the analogy’s defect, John R. Silberbrings out that “. . . the professor, if he has theknowledge and character to merit his position,has some notion about what students will needand is prepared to offer his students guidance inthe professor’s area of competence that will con-tribute to the student’s greatest development. Theprofessor guides and aids the students, but hedoes not try to please the students by givingthem what they want. Instead the professorencourages students to develop in the directionthey need. There are similarities between therelation of the professors to students as betweenshopkeepers and customers, but there are alsovery important differences.”7

360 Vincent Luizzi

Let us explore further aspects of this last obser-vation about how the notion of a satisfiedcustomer fails to guide us in our disparate worksettings. The professor – student relationship isa paradigm case of how the business model ofrelationships falls far short of capturing the natureof specific roles and the obligations and respon-sibilities associated with them. Professors provideguidance and counseling for students who seekadvice in selecting who and what they become.8

As representatives of a community which isdedicated to reason, professors serve as modelsfor ordering one’s life with reason as they instillan appreciation for the discovery and creation intheir respective fields. They represent the intel-lectually and morally mature as much as thestudents represent the maturing.9

Edward Long offers an especially good accountof this relationship and how it differs from othermodels of interaction which vary according tothe degree to which people must becomeinvolved with the provider of the good orservice. Merchants and entrepreneurs strive togive customers what customers want. This rela-tionship occupies one end of a spectrum whereinvolvement is at a minimum, a simple pur-chasing and dispensing of goods or services. Thenext level of involvement is illustrated by therelationship between health clubs and theirmembers, where the members must take someresponsibility for acquiring the benefits which theclub offers. Long designates such people par-ticipating members to distinguish them fromconsumers. The relationship which people havewith professionals represents the next level ofinteraction. According to Long, this relationshipis characterized by mutual cooperation with bothparties acting responsibly. The good doctor is onewho does not merely diagnose and prescribe butone who develops in the patient an under-standing of the problem; this understandingenables the patient to participate fully in thetreatment. We come now to the student –teacher relationship. Says Long: “. . . learninginvolves a still more crucial level of interaction.. . . In order for teaching to function well, thestudent must become the agent of learning, onewho acts not only in response to the guidanceand stimulation of mentors, but who basically

takes full responsibility for accomplishing what isdesired. This means that the relationship betweenteachers and students involves covenant, thehighest form of interaction. Teaching is notdirectly dependent upon fees for services(although it has sometimes been), but upontuition that is paid to establish a special com-munity to which both teachers and studentsbelong. This suggests why we shouldn’t speak ofstudents as ‘clients,’ let alone as ‘consumers,’ northink of our relationship to them as merely com-mercial or contractual.”10

These concerns which surround the professor-student relationship are not the concerns whichmarketers and salespeople have with customerswhose wants are of paramount concern.Conversely, as customers we have no expectationthat salespeople have any regard for our personalgrowth and development, for the cultivation ofour intellects, or for holding themselves out asmodels for leading the good life. On thecontrary, we expect from salespeople, and indeedusually receive from them, onesided statementsand claims geared toward promoting andinducing us to purchase their product or service.If this treatment is of the essence of the sales-person’s conduct, this treatment is essentially notworthy of imitating as a model for how we treatother people.

What about cigarette companies addingnicotine to cigarettes to augment the addictionof their customers? What about fast food com-panies cooking french fries in beef tallow ormovie theaters popping corn in tropical oils allto the ill-health of their customers. Thesescenarios call out to us not to treat people asbusinesses have treated customers whether it bebecause of manipulative practices or because ofpractices which gratify only narrow ranges ofconsumer interests and appetites; each practicedemonstrates a lack of concern for the overallwell-being of the customer. Even in more benigncircumstances, we do not want to be treatedmerely as customers, since this treatment candiminish an aspect of our identity which is moreimportant to us. When the hospital refers to itspatients as customers, it frightens us with itssuggestion that our money means more to it thanour health.

Some Dissatisfaction with Satisfaction 361

I focused above on the professor-studentrelationship to illustrate clearly how these rolesentail behaviors that the business model cannotaccount for. Similar illustrations could be devel-oped for the other roles which I mentioned, butlet us press on to the next claim, since ourprimary concern, to this point, has been one ofrevealing TQM’s inadequacy for assisting uni-versities with contributing to the moral educa-tion of their students. A study of theprofessor-student relationship is no less relevantfor establishing my second major claim, that uni-versities can inform TQM about the nature ofquality and its connection with activity in amoral community. As we address this issue, wefill a lacuna which some commentators observeto be quite evident: “We have never found aquality company (school, hospital) that was notalso an ethical; company. We do not know pre-cisely which comes first or how they are related;indeed there is no proof that they are related, andif they are, we do not know what the relation-ship is.”11

II.

In the university the interaction of students andfaculty gives rise to a connectedness of liveswhich takes on a vitality of its own.12 The myriadof ways in which students and faculty organizefor interaction and for discovering and creating– seminars, tutorials, lectures, labs, studios,performances – all develop their own distinctivecharacters. But whether one seminar has as itsnature a quiet and contemplative manner andanother class, a contentious way, and yet anothercharacterized by gaiety or wonderment, howeverdifferent their complexions, the university, theseorganizations within it, and the participants areall of a like nature. The essence of their vitalityis a network of values13 including those of inquiryand creation and the knowledge and art whichresult. Another part of this system is the valueof community14 and of organizing in ways whichpromote these primary activities of inquiry, dis-covery, and creation. These activities presupposehonesty, toleration, cooperation, and sincerety.No knowledge comes from falsified or fabricateddata any more than it does from indoctrination

or the unwillingness to consider that things mightbe otherwise than one has always believed to bethe case. That openness and tolerance are thestuff of which cooperation within our organiza-tions is made becomes evident when we try toimagine people cooperating when they areintolerant of each other or when candor givesway to legerdemain and skullduggery. Andsincerety is a necessary companion to honesty,tolerance, and cooperation; for it tells us that theperson or institution indeed values those valueswhich are essential for the functioning of theuniversity. The person who is insincerely tolerantis the same as the person who does not reallyvalue toleration and that person is none otherthan the person who has rejected a value whichis essential to the vitality of the university. So, awhole nexus of values is essential to the normaloperation of the university.

What happens when this normal operationproceeds? Truth and knowledge emerge in partby weeding out error as much as beauty does byeliminating sour or wrong notes or by editingcumbersome locutions. This process has notworked its course when error and confusion arepresent any more than it has when manuscriptsstill need editing or lines are still unlearned fora performance. But when these activities at lastculminate in the production of knowledge orbeauty, they have secured for us quality andexcellence. This analysis shows that quality andexcellence are the natural outcome of the inquiryand creation which is carried out in a worksetting which is thoroughly infused with values.These people, their activity, and their environ-ment, the university, are the ingredients for acomplete vision of how quality and excellenceenter human experience.

A few more points are in order about theseinterconnected values. Universities serve theirstudents first by making them a part of theircommunities where behaviors tied to these valuesare modeled and where opportunities foraquiring them are thereby afforded. They also doso by drawing attention explicitly to what isoccurring in this process through such mecha-nisms as value credos, mission statements, andfreshman seminar and orientation programs. Ineffect, as universities conduct business as usual,

362 Vincent Luizzi

they contribute to their students’ moral devel-opment; and universities can augment thisdevelopment as they highlight the specific natureof this process.

Further, the values which are essential for theemergence of quality in the university are no lessimportant for other work settings; the analysisrenders not just a restricted example of howquality is connected with other key values butserves as a paradigm for understanding the con-nection. One can readily imagine how any workenvironment lacking one of these features wouldimprove with its introduction. What would itmean to say that we can reach higher levels ofquality in manufacturing furniture, dispensingdrugs, marketing food, cleaning clothing, repair-ing cars, or making touchdowns by reducing thehonesty, tolerance, cooperation, sincerety, orsense of community among the workers?

This analysis is also instructive for the frame-work it provides for evaluating certain businesspractices. Consider the current and popularpractice of downsizing when it entails the invol-untary termination of workers. Proponents ofthis innovation can readily connect it with effortsto secure quality; it allows for a more efficientuse of resources. But a management which firstadopts a view that certain members of its work-force are expendable in the name of securingquality, and then proceeds to demonstrate thecogency of this maxim with layoffs and the elim-ination of positions, ends up constructing a worksetting which is inimical to the production ofquality. For the maxim conflicts with and under-mines values which foster quality. The threat ofexpulsion from a job tugs at a community’scohesiveness as much as it turns any apparentcooperation on the part of the workers into apretense bred by fear. Any claims about man-agement’s valuing its workers ring hollow andserve to undermine community as much assincere statements, verified by a secure environ-ment, promote it.

We now have a deeper understanding of theshortcomings of any universal push to pursuequality by aiming for satisfied customers. We firstobserved how this teaching interferes with theuniversitity’s role in the moral education of itsstudents. Now we have seen how such a view

not only isolates quality and excellence from thecomplex system of values of which they are apart, but it also conceives quality and excellenceas independent objects toward which we striverather than identifying them as byproducts ofvalue-laden work. Universities can thus assistthese programs which purport to have universalapplication for the human pursuit of quality bydemonstrating how quality should be understoodand attained in connection with other significantvalues.

Notes

1 John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism (New York: TheBobbs-Merril Company, Inc., 1957), p. 14.2 T.Q.M pioneer, W. Edwards Deming, recounts theessentials of what he passed along to Japanese man-agement about quality: “Necessity to study the needsof the consumer, and to provide service to product,was one of the main doctrines of quality taught toJapanese management in 1950 and onward. Foremostis the principle that the purpose of consumer researchis to understand the consumer’s needs and wishes. . . . A second principle is that no one can guess thefuture loss of business from a dissatisfied customer.”Out of Crisis (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology Press, Center for Advanced EngineeringStudy, 1992), p. 175. See also Association of SchoolAdministrators’ Creating Quality Schools (Arlington:AASA, 1992), p. 3. This work places “meeting andexceeding the needs of ‘customers’” at the top of itslist of characteristics of quality. 3 Gary Bonvillian and Terry L. Dennis, “TotalQuality Management in Higher Education:Opportunities and Obstacles,” Total QualityManagement in Higher Education: Is It Working? Whyor Why Not?, edited by Serbrenia J. Sims and RonaldR. Sims (Westport: Praeger, 1995), pp. 38–43. Theauthors bring out that, however impractical it mayseem to define quality in academia, faculty must beinvolved in this process as they grapple with main-taining academic standards and respecting consumerrights. 4 See, e.g., David Entin, “Whither TQM?” AAHEBulletin (May 1994), pp. 5–7. Entin observes a greaterstudent-centeredness resulting from the introductionof talk of students as customers. His subscription hereto the traditional notion of customer in the businessworld is just as clear as it is later in the article wherehe rejects the suggestion of one commentator that we

Some Dissatisfaction with Satisfaction 363

think about TQM’s advice as amonunting to thegeneral teaching of the Golden Rule.5 Joann Neurath, Peter Plastrik, and John Cleveland,Total Quality Management Handbook: Applying theBaldridge Criteria to Schools (Lansing: On PurposeAssociates, 1992), p. 10. This manual identifies“customer” as a “TQM term” for “the person whoneeds the work” but invites the adoption of analternative vocabulary, since some people “find itscommencial, business flavor distracting and nothelpful. . . .”6 See, e.g., Robert Kane, Through the Moral Maze:Searching for Values in a Pluralistic World (New York:Paragon House Publishers, 1994), pp. 123–124. In thisrecent attempt to reconcile absolute values with thepanoply of seemingly diverse value systems, Kaneendorses Plato’s goal of teaching goodness in theacademy. But Kane diverges from Plato as he findsgoodness to be aspirational in nature. This findingleads Kane to argue for an open, democratic exchangeof ideas to be the proper method for pursuing knowl-edge of this sort in the university. 7 John R. Silber, “Press Conference with theCommunity on Values and Morals in the University,”Morality and Values in the University, edited by JeffreyGordon, Vincent Luizzi, and Marion Tangum (SanMarcos: Southwest Texas State University, 1996), p. 68.8 Hazel Barnes, “Learning Who You Are andTeaching It to Others,” Values and Morality in theUniversity, pp. 11–12. Barnes here clarifies how a pro-fessor’s identification of his or her special interests andstandpoints adds an important dimension to teachingand to the intellectual maturation of students. Shemade this point on the twenty-fifth anniversary of thepublication of her book, The University as the NewChurch (London: Watts and Co., Ltd., 1970). In thisbook Prof. Barnes argues for the university’s being theideal setting for young men and women growingintellectually. (p. 35) 9 See Jacob Neusner, “Learning and Growing Up,”How to Grade Your Professors and Other UnexpectedAdvice (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), pp. 15–21.Neusner depicts professors as bringing an objectivestance to a subject while students, from a subjectivestance, want to know its significance for their ownlives. Students grow up as they free themselves fromsmall conceptions of self which are void of theteachings of a liberal education.10 Edward L. Long, “Promises and Predicaments ofthe Learning Experience,” Morality and Values in theUniversity, pp. 17–18.11 Lloyd Dobyns and Clare Crawford-Mason,Thinking about Quality: Progress, Wisdom, and the

Deming Philosophy (New York: Times Books, 1994),p. 230.12 See Campus Life: In Search of Community, with aforeword by Ernest L. Boyer, (Princeton: TheCarnegie Foundation for the Advancement ofTeaching, 1990. This work characterizes the specialnature of the university community as one that ispurposeful, open, just, disciplined, caring, and cele-brative. See also Edward L. Long, Jr.’s Higher Educationas a Moral Enterprise (Washington, D.C.: GeorgetownUniversity Press, 1992), pp. 45–55. Long investigateshow the communal aspect of higher education cancoexist with the private. 13 Another commentator identifies the essentialvalues as freedom, community, and safety (preventionof harm). David Hoekema, Campus Rules and MoralCommunity (Lanham, Maryland: Roman andLittlefield Publishers, Inc., 1994), p. 134. RobertMaynard Hutchins isolates freedom – of inquiry,discussion, and teaching – as the preeminent value ofthe university conceived as a community of scholarsin his “What is a University?” a radio address of April18, 1935 and published in Hutchins’s No Friendly Voice(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1936),pp. 5–11. While Hoekema’s and Hutchins’s projectsare related to mine, neither investigates, as mine does,what values are connected with the production ofquality in the university.14 J. Victor Baldridge is well known for his critiqueof the model of the university as a community. Helaments how widely this “utopian projection” isaccepted as a panacea to the problem of depersonal-ization in the university. In doing so, he paves the wayfor his own proposal, the political model, which likensthe university to political systems with their specialintertests and conflicts. J. Victor Baldridge, “Organ-izational Characteristics of Colleges and Universities,”The Dynamics of Organizational Change in Education,edited by J. Victor Baldridge and Terrence Deal(Berkeley: McCutchan Publishing Corporation, 1983),pp. 38–59. Now, Baldridge’s concern is with devel-oping a realistic model of the university for gover-nance within the university. As such, it is irrelevantwhether the model of university as community isutopian as a model of governance if the model servesto guide us in understanding the connection betweencommunity and quality as is our concern here.

Southwest Texas State University,Department of Philosophy,

601 University Drive, TX 78666-4616,San Marcos, U.S.A.

E-mail: vl01@swt.edu.

364 Vincent Luizzi