As part of this research a comprehensive literature of BE was undertaken. The findings including a full listing of peer reviewed BE journal papers are presented in this article.

BE journal papers were identified using the Scopus Elsevier database. Twenty-nine (29) keywords were searched for in paper titles and then the papers were thoroughly scrutinized to ensure that only genuinely peer reviewed BE focused journal papers were shortlisted. For the purpose of this research, the definition of BE used was as follows: “Business excellence is “excellence” in strategies, processes, and stakeholder related performance results that have been validated by assessments using proven business excellence models”. This definition was used to ensure there is alignment between this study’s definition and the understanding of business excellence as portrayed by the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council.

With respect to this understanding and the tens of thousands of organisations that use these models, the major components of business excellence are: –

1. The core values and concepts of excellence (Baldrige) (NIST, 2019) or fundamental concepts of excellence (EFQM) (EFQM, 2019) which are considered as the building blocks of BE.
2. The BE criteria (displayed as a 9-criteria BE model by EFQM and 7-criteria model in Baldrige). Both models show the interrelationship between the criteria and its relationship to business enablers and business results (thus providing a holistic model of excellence). The core values and concepts of excellence are embedded in these criteria.
3. Assessment methodology whereby a scoring mechanism of 1000 points is provided and guides organisations on assessment against the model, from simple self-assessments to rigorous externally validated assessments for national business excellence awards. Both models also provide tools to assist in assessing business enablers and results using the RADAR (Results, Approach, Deployment and Assess and Refine) approach provided by EFQM and ADLI (Approach, Deployment, Learning, and Integration) in the Baldrige framework. In both types of models, assessment scores of 600+ are considered as highly mature in terms of business excellence and organisations scoring at this level have the opportunity to become recognised at a national award level.

A paper was classified as a BE paper only if it satisfied all the following conditions:

• The paper was predominantly (at least 50%) focused on BE;
• The research was related to BEFs as advocated by the GEM Council. Therefore, researching their theory or use or proposing a development or variant of these established frameworks supported by research validating any proposed change

Papers have been identified and listed in sequence of their average citations per year to help researchers in BE in carrying out their literature review and to improve their understanding of BE. It is realized that the number of raw citations might not be the best measure for ranking the papers in terms of their impact because there may be a bias favouring the older published papers over the newer ones. In order to remove this bias these papers have been listed on the basis of their average citations per year.

The worksheet in the attached  Excel File list all the BE Papers: This worksheet contains the list of all 415 papers, their number of citations, and average citations per year by paper.

Contact:

Saad Ghafoor
PhD Researcher Excellence Without Borders
Massey University, New Zealand
Email: s.g.ghafoor@massey.ac.nz

Dr. Robin S. Mann
Founder and Head of the Centre for Organisational Excellence (COER) Ltd.
Chief Supervisor
Massey University, New Zealand
Email: r.s.mann@massey.ac.nz

By Saad Ghafoor and Dr. Robin Mann, Centre for Organisational Excellence Research, September 2020.

The Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) recently updated its research on the number of active Business Excellence (BE) awards in the world.

Eligibility of an award to be considered as an active BE award

BE awards were considered as “active” if:

• they were based on a holistic BE framework and use similar assessment methods to internationally recognised frameworks such as the EFQM Excellence Model and the Baldrige Excellence Framework;
• the award was run/held in 2018 or 2019 or planned for 2020 or 2021.

Figure 1: The current EFQM Excellence Model

Figure 2: The current Baldrige Excellence Framework

To review the countries that have BE awards or initiatives click here. Please inform us if our information on your country’s award is incorrect or missing.

The graph below shows the most common BE models for BE awards. Whilst there are 56 countries with active awards, some countries have more than one national award and there are also four international awards covering more than one country, these are Africa (Africa Excellence Award), Asia Pacific Quality Organisation (APQO), EFQM Excellence Award, and Iberoamerican Excellence Award (FUNDIBEC). Therefore, the graph shows the BE models used across a total of 71 awards.

The following graph shows that the EFQM Excellence Model is the most popular with 24 BE awards using it. Another 5 BE awards use unique BE models that resemble the EFQM Excellence Model. The Baldrige Excellence Framework is used by 11 BE awards with another 11 using BE frameworks that resemble the Baldrige Excellence Framework. Fourteen BE awards use a unique BE model/ framework. Two BECs (Sheikh Khalifa Government Excellence Program of the UAE and Egypt) use the Government Excellence Model (GEM) and two (Dubai Government Excellence Programme and Abu Dhabi Award for Government Excellence) use unique models resembling the GEM.

The research on BE awards is part of a larger research study titled Excellence Without Borders (EWB) which was launched by COER in July 2018 and is supported by the Global Excellence Model Council. This research is investigating the current state of and best practices in designing BE frameworks/ models and promoting, facilitating, awarding, supporting, and measuring BE on a national/ regional and sectoral level.

A total of 26 countries (and 29 BE custodian organisations) have participated in the project. BE custodians are organisations responsible for designing BEFs, and for promoting facilitating BE and BE awards in their countries. Some countries had more than one BE custodian organisation participating in the project such as the Dubai Government Excellence Program (DGEP), Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award (SKEA), and the Dubai Economy Department (DED) in the United Arab Emirates.

Initial EWB research findings are available here. Further findings are being made available through a series of academic research papers. It is envisaged that the research findings will lead to an improved understanding of BE and help BE Custodians to raise the profile and use of BE worldwide.

The Excellence Without Borders (EWB) project is the largest study on Business Excellence (BE) to date. The project aims to investigate BE practices and strategies of the BE custodians. The latest research findings from this project can be found here.

As part of this research a comprehensive literature of BE was undertaken. The findings including a full listing of peer reviewed BE journal papers are presented in this article.

BE journal papers were identified using the Scopus Elsevier database. Twenty-nine (29) keywords were searched for in paper titles and then the papers were thoroughly scrutinized to ensure that only genuinely peer reviewed BE focused journal papers were shortlisted. For the purpose of this research, the definition of BE used was as follows: “Business excellence is “excellence” in strategies, processes, and stakeholder related performance results that have been validated by assessments using proven business excellence models”. This definition was used to ensure there is alignment between this study’s definition and the understanding of business excellence as portrayed by the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council.

With respect to this understanding and the tens of thousands of organisations that use these models, the major components of business excellence are: –

1. The core values and concepts of excellence (Baldrige) (NIST, 2019) or fundamental concepts of excellence (EFQM) (EFQM, 2019) which are considered as the building blocks of BE.
2. The BE criteria (displayed as a 9-criteria BE model by EFQM and 7-criteria model in Baldrige). Both models show the interrelationship between the criteria and its relationship to business enablers and business results (thus providing a holistic model of excellence). The core values and concepts of excellence are embedded in these criteria.
3. Assessment methodology whereby a scoring mechanism of 1000 points is provided and guides organisations on assessment against the model, from simple self-assessments to rigorous externally validated assessments for national business excellence awards. Both models also provide tools to assist in assessing business enablers and results using the RADAR (Results, Approach, Deployment and Assess and Refine) approach provided by EFQM and ADLI (Approach, Deployment, Learning, and Integration) in the Baldrige framework. In both types of models, assessment scores of 600+ are considered as highly mature in terms of business excellence and organisations scoring at this level having the opportunity to become recognised at a national award level.

A paper was classified as a BE paper only if it satisfied all the following conditions:

• The paper was predominantly (at least 50%) focused on BE;
• It examined the existing established BE models or proposed a development/ variant of these established models and showed clearly the differences with research validating any proposed change; and
• It adopted the same understanding of BE as portrayed by the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council.

Papers have been identified and listed in sequence of their average citations per year to help researchers in BE in carrying out their literature review and to improve their understanding of BE. It is realized that the number of raw citations might not be the best measure for ranking the papers in terms of their impact because there may be a bias favoring the older published papers over the newer ones. In order to remove this bias these papers have been listed on the basis of their average citations per year.

The worksheets in the attached Excel file show:-

• Listing of all BE Papers: This worksheet contains the list of all 382 papers, their number of citations, theme code and average citations per year by paper.
• Avg. Citation by Journal: This worksheet contains the list of all the journals that published BE papers and the launch year, AJG ratings, h-indexes, number of papers, number of citations, average citations per year of these journals.
• Authors of 5 or More BE Papers: This worksheet contains the list of authors that published 5 or more papers along with the department/ research centre, institute, country and keywords of these authors.
• Themes and AJG Ratings: This worksheet contains the number of papers and citations under 8 themes and 16 sub-themes and the average citation per year per BE paper in a journal compared to the AJG rating of that journal.
• Graphical Analysis: This worksheet contains the trend analysis of the publications and their citations from the period 1990 to date.

Contact:

Saad Ghafoor
PhD Researcher Excellence Without Borders
Massey University, New Zealand
Email: s.g.ghafoor@massey.ac.nz

Dr. Robin S. Mann
Founder and Head of the Centre for Organisational Excellence (COER) Ltd.
Chief Supervisor
Massey University, New Zealand
Email: r.s.mann@massey.ac.nz

The Centre for Organisational Excellence Research launched the project Excellence Without Border in July 2018. All the known Business Excellence (BE) custodians that had held a BE award between 2016-2019 were deemed eligible for participating in the project. From the 55 countries that met this condition, 26 countries participated with some countries having more one BE custodian participating. 10 countries also participated in validating the survey; improving its wording and language. This helped to make the terminologies more relevant to the different participants for example the ones that follow EFQM based terminologies or MBNQA terminologies.

The project intended to answer the following questions: –

1. How do business excellence custodians design business excellence frameworks/ models?
2. How do business excellence custodians promote the use of business excellence in their countries?
3. How do business excellence custodians facilitate the use of business excellence in their countries?
4. How do business excellence custodians award and recognize business excellence in their countries?
5. What are the support structures for business excellence in different countries?
6. How do the business excellence custodians measure the success of their business excellence frameworks/ models?

Once the responses from 29 BE custodians were compiled, the initial draft of the report was sent out to the GEM Council for approval. After approval, the draft was sent to the participants for internal validation. This version of the report was only for internal use by the project participants and not for public release.

From this version a second version was created for public release – the PUBLIC RELEASE VERSION, DOWNLOAD HERE, shows aggregated responses and excludes the names/ indications of the participants.

Future Research

Further to the EWB project, the participants that were interested in involving business excellence assessors were also provided with another survey specially designed for business excellence assessors. Preliminary results from that survey were shared with the participating countries. An additional survey for organisations that are on the business excellence journey is now underway – if you represent one of these organisations and would like to participate in this research please click here

For further information contact:

Saad Ghafoor
PhD Researcher for Excellence Without Borders
Centre for Organisational Excellence Research
Massey University, New Zealand
S.G.Ghafoor@massey.ac.nz

The Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) has launched a global study to investigate Business Excellence. The project titled Excellence Without Borders (EWB) has 29 countries that are participating. We want to hear from organisations that have used business excellence frameworks – we want to hear how this has helped your organization and also learn what more could be done in your country to promote business excellence.

PARTICIPATE BY CLICKING THIS LINK

Reason to Participate: –

• Answering the questions will help you to reflect on how you are implementing business excellence within your own organization.
• As a participant you will be provided with a summary report of the survey results from the Client Survey. The findings from this will provide insights into how to improve your organisation’s business excellence approach.
• Your contribution will assist your country in benchmarking its business excellence services against other countries and develop future initiatives in business excellence to serve you better.
• The Client Survey is one component of the Excellence Without Borders study. Refer to https://www.excellencewithoutborders.org for full details on the research and https://www.excellencewithoutborders.org/resources/ to read some of the previous research reports published from similar research undertaken in 2005 and 2010.
• This research project with your support is expected to be the largest to date.
• The Global Excellence Model Council are sponsoring the research and will be reviewing the research findings as an input into its global business excellence strategy to deliver greater socio-economic benefits to nations.

This is your chance to contribute towards business excellence in your country. In order to fill in the survey online, please click here or scan the QR code below

You can choose to fill in the survey in more than one sitting. You are requested to complete the survey by the 1st of October 2019.

For further information contact:

Saad Ghafoor
PhD Researcher for Excellence Without Borders
Center for Organizational Excellence Research
Massey University, New Zealand
S.G.Ghafoor@massey.ac.nz