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.

382 Business Excellence papers have been published from 1990 onwards Click here for a full listing and analysis

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.

Key Findings 52% of BE papers are published in or after 2009 and 25% in the last 5 years The most popular journals for publishing BE papers in were Total Quality Management and Business Excellence (82 papers), The TQM Journal (37 papers) and International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management (34 papers). The journals that had published more than 5 BE journal papers and had the highest citations rates were Journal of Operations Management (11.6 citations per paper), International Journal of Production Research (5 citations per paper), and International Journal of Operations and Production Management (2.8 citations per paper). Research on the design and composition of models was the most popular research topic. The paper with the most citations, 280 citations, was titled “An empirical assessment of the EFQM Excellence Model: Evaluation as a TQM framework relative to the MBNQA Model” and second with 256 citations was “Quality awards and the market value of the firm: An empirical investigation” The most average citations per year for a paper was 28 for two papers “An empirical assessment of the EFQM Excellence Model: Evaluation as a TQM framework relative to the MBNQA Model” and The application of performance measurement system model using Malcolm Baldrige Model (MBM) to support Civil State Apparatus Law (ASN) number 5 of 2014 in Indonesia” Most papers had an average of 2 citation per year. The authors that had published the most BE papers were Robin Mann, New Zealand (15 papers), Nigel Grigg, New Zealand (8 papers), Ana Belén Escrig-Tena, Spain (7 papers) and James Evans, United States (7 papers).

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.

Ongoing research The listing and analysis of BE journal papers will be updated yearly thus providing a continuously up-to-date source of information on BE for researchers. Please let us know if we are missing any information or if you find any errors

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, Dr Robin Mann, Dr Nigel Grigg and Sanjay Mathrani, Sep 2019.

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.

Business excellence custodians are the organisations that are responsible for carrying out business excellence related activities in their respective countries or regions.

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?

29 BE custodians from 26 countries submitted their surveys and 13 of the participants also contributed in the form of interviews/ Skype discussions.

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

Participate in our survey by 1 October 2019 and support the global business excellence movement!

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.

If your organisation has undertaken at least one assessment (either internal self-assessment or external assessment) of its performance using a business excellence model/ framework in the last 5 years please participate in this study.

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

The project Excellence Without Borders (EWB) has been launched by the Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER). The project will involve and engage Business Excellence (BE) custodian organisations from around the world. BE custodians are the organisations that are responsible for carrying out BE activities such as disseminating, facilitating and awarding BE in their respective regions.

The project will investigate the design, deployment and impact of National/Regional/Sectoral Business Excellence (BE) programs. This research will help BE Custodians to learn from each other and strengthen national approaches to business excellence. As a result, it is envisaged that more organisations will become aware of and apply business excellence principles and practices leading to greater socio-economic benefits across the globe.

Currently the participant custodian organisations are reviewing the surveys and the methodology of the project so that they can provide the research team with useful feedback and comments. Following the incorporation of these comments, the custodian organisations will assist in distributing the surveys to clients and evaluators and also complete a survey on behalf of their own organisation. Learn more about the terms of reference of the project here.

21 BE custodian organisations have already signed up to the project since invitations were issued on 19th July with more registering each week. The Global Excellence Models (GEM) Council are providing in-principle support to the project. The project team will be giving a presentation on the project to the GEM Council Meeting in Sydney on 29 August. Following this the team will attend the Australian Evaluator Training, 30 August, and 2018 Excellence Conference and 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Australian Excellence Awards (to register for this conference click here).

The initial findings of the project will be shared at the Global Organisational Excellence Congress in Abu Dhabi from 10-12 December 2018.

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

By Saad Ghafoor and Dr Robin Mann, Centre for Organisational Excellence Research, May 2018.

Research conducted by the Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) has revealed that at least 55 countries have a national business excellence award. Some countries have more than one award, making a total of 65 award programs.

Eligibility of an award to be considered as an active Business Excellence Award
Business excellence awards were considered as “active” if they were based on a holistic business excellence framework and used similar assessment methods to internationally recognised frameworks such as the EFQM Excellence Model and the Baldrige Excellence Framework. Also, to be included, an awards program must have been run in 2016, 2017 or planned for 2018.

In addition to the 55 countries, 18 countries did not have an awards program but were running initiatives to encourage organisations on a business excellence journey. Therefore in total 73 countries have a business excellence award or initiative.

List of Active Business Excellence Awards
We encourage readers of this blog to check the list and inform us if our information on your country’s award is incorrect or missing.

The following graph shows that the EFQM Excellence Model is the most commonly used, particularly in Europe and the Middle East. 30 countries use the EFQM Excellence Model or models similar to it. The Baldrige Excellence Framework is also popular with use in the United States and many countries in Asia. 19 countries use the Baldrige Excellence Framework or models similar to it. 15 awards programs use a unique model and one business excellence award in Sweden enables award applicants to choose between using the Baldrige Excellence Framework, EFQM Excellence Model or the Swedish Business Excellence Model.

COER supports organisations and countries in business excellence in a number of ways:

• COER is undertaking research that is improving our understanding of National Business Excellence Awards and strategies. COER’s “Excellence Without Borders”. Project aims to assist the administrators and custodians of business excellence to effectively develop and manage regional and national business excellence strategies and awards.
• COER is working closely with a number of countries to help them develop national business excellence strategies and services. For example, refer to our recent work in Tonga and how we assist organisations on their improvement journey through Dubai We Learn.
• COER is currently organising with the Abu Dhabi Chamber of Commerce, APQO and GBN the Global Organisational Excellence Congress, 10-12 December 2018, Abu Dhabi, UAE. This event includes the International Best Practice Competition and GBN’s Global Benchmarking Awards.
• COER’s BPIR.com resource contains a wealth of best practice information including 1,000’s of best practices that are categorized by business excellence frameworks, and over 80 self-assessment tools.

For more information on COER’s work please contact Dr Robin Mann, r.s.mann@massey.ac.nz