A Comparison of Quality and Business Excellence Programs in the World (Article Sample)

A COMPARISON OF QUALITY AND BUSINESS EXCELLENCE PROGRAMS
IN THE WORLD
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Introduction
The business excellence and quality improvement in many global companies are currently being recognized by the numerous awards being accorded to performers. These award programs have been found to boost productivity and employee-manager relations significantly. This script provides a summary of Miguel's research about some of the characteristics of the quality awards and business excellence models.
The paper discusses similarities and differences of the awards such as their mission, levels of eligibility and recognition, categories, core values, as well as point values. The author believes these similarities and differences have not been adequately researched. Today, 76 countries practice award programs and three regional awards exist in the course to recognize and communicate great practices. The awards had been originally accustomed in Canada as Canadian Quality Award, Australia as Australian Business Excellence Award, Japan as Deming Prize, and the United States as Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award. Similarly, three 'regional' i.e. the Asia Pacific Quality Award, the Ibero-American Quality Award, and the EQA.
Miguel investigated 39 awards around the globe using qualitative data gathering rather than the 29 he earlier researched in 2004. He designed a more specific objective to confirm mission of the awards, core values, awards eligibility categories, initial reference models, the level of award recognition, and the criteria for excellence categories targeting particular regions to show the differences and similarities.
He analyzed secondary sources such as documents issued by the award institutions. He also collected information from e-mails, letters, and the internet award program pages. He discovered a descending priority to countries across Europe (42%), Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania (4%). On the track of the development of these awards, the author had noticed that two awards are introduced each year on average since 1988 (Miguel, 2005).
Findings and Discussion
Miguel's study found 33 award programs to be similar in many aspects that he investigated. However, there were notable variations in the objectives of these programs. Some were set to facilitate excellence in business while others to promote self-assessment and provide an opportunity for the firms to learn about themselves. After looking at the mission statements of the 33 award programs, the author finally grouped the objectives of the programs into six categories.
The figures Miguel provides in the article indicated that about one-half of all the studied awards cited performance excellence and sharing of best practices. Also, Total Quality Management appear in a fair number of mission statements. The quality factor appeared in the statement of one of the three regional awards.
Initial reference models
The publication clarified that 25 of the award programs, including countries such as Ecuador, Hong Kong, and New Zealand, opted to use MBNQA as their reference model. However, not all the awards exclusively referenced MBNQA. The author states that some countries have considered the European Quality Award and the Australian Business Excellence Award to be favorites.
Core values and concepts
According to the author, core values and concepts depend on attitude, beliefs and behaviors reported in top organizations. His investigation in 24 awards revealed that some of them referred to the fundamental values of "fundamentals of excellence" and these core values averaged to 9. According to him, 'customer', 'leadership', and 'social responsibility' topped the list of core values and concept rank. It was followed by 'innovation' and 'learning' at the second position.
Award eligibility categories
This is the section of the article that the author defined as the mode of establishing which organizations are qualified to apply for the awards. The investigation determined that some of the award programs do not recognize the following:
* local companies
* state agencies
* federal government agencies
* non-profit organizations
From the research, the author found that many awards have eligibilities ranging from 1 to 7. Only a few countries had awards eligibility categories of 11. Apparently, 58% of the awards were found to categorize both profit and non-profit firms as eligible, and there was no limitation to a company being a public or a private business. The research also considered the size of companies i.e. small, medium, and large. Others were classified as service or manufacturing companies by the award programs. A great division was found between business and sectors like education and health care. The cases where all sorts of organizations were likely for a single award were recorded in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
Levels of award recognition
The research noted that most programs recognized only the award winners though some of the programs had set multiple levels of appreciation. A few others appreciate the runner-up. There was a notable difference in recognition as some award programs off...