Service quality in a public agency: same expectations but different perceptions by employees, managers, and customers Mary Gowan a, *, John Seymour b,1 , Santiago Ibarreche c,2 , Charles Lackey d,3 a Department of Management and Organization, Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, 3339 Van Munching Hall, College Park, MD 20742, USA b El Paso Independent School District, 6531 Boeing Dr., El Paso, TX 79925, USA c Department of Marketing and Management, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX 79968-0539, USA d Department of Business Administration, University of Texas at Brownsville, 80 Fort Brown, Brownsville, TX 78520, USA Received 1 March 2001; received in revised form 1 July 2001; accepted 1 August 2001 Abstract Managers, employees, and customers in a public agency provided information about expectations and perceptions of service quality. No differences were found for expectations between any of the groups. Additionally, manager and employee perceptions were similar. However, unlike previous research findings (e.g., by Bitner et al. [J. Mark. 58 (1994) 95.]), their perceptions were lower than the perceptions of customers. Implications of the findings for the management of nonprofit organizations are discussed. D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. Keywords: Service quality; Customers; Employees; Managers 1084-8568/01/$ – see front matter D 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. PII:S1084-8568(01)00040-2 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +1-301-405-6986. E-mail addresses: mgowan@rhsmith.umd.edu (M. Gowan), sibarr@utep.edu (S. Ibarreche), clackey@utb1.utb.edu (C. Lackey). 1 This author completed this research as part of the requirements for his MBA degree at the University of Texas at El Paso. 2 Tel.: + 1-915-747-7756. 3 Tel.: + 1-956-548-8707. www.journalofqualitymanagement.com Journal of Quality Management 6 (2001) 275–291