Building and Sustaining a Culture of Quality

Concurrent Session

M33 - Are Excellence-Oriented Organizations More Adaptable?

Primary Presenter(s)

• 

  André M. Carvalho

  Researcher and PhD student
  MIT Portugal Program
  Braga, Braga, Portugal

Co-Presenter(s)

• 

  Paulo Sampaio

  Professor of Quality and Organizational Excellence
  University of Minho
  Braga, Braga, Portugal

Level: Intermediate

Excellence initiatives such as the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program or the EFQM Program and related awards have always faced some criticism. However, in the last few years their challenges seem renewed: Insecurity over its models and results is increasing, and the number of organizations applying is decreasing each year as more and more organizations opt for self-developed excellence approaches. One of the criticisms excellence programs are facing has to deal with stagnation—as they seem unable to promote agility and answer the high change rates in the business environments. Although there is some recognition of the problem, the fact is that the practical actions taken still seem to be too limited to ease the worries of industrial organizations. In order to understand if and how an excellence-oriented culture can lead to an enduring capacity to change and adapt, we have studied four industrial organizations in Europe. The focus was on understanding the dynamics of these relationships and the differences (if any) between structured approaches and self-developed initiatives in creating in an organization a growing mindset on excellence and agility.

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the main challenges and criticism that excellence programs and their associate models face.
• Recognize the need for adaptability and the structured development of agile capabilities.
• Understand the relationships between excellence, organizational culture, and agility, and how their elements and enablers can be managed to develop a sustainable excellence-oriented culture.
• Discuss how a sustainable excellence-oriented culture can be source of long-term success and competitive advantage.
• Understand the future of quality approaches and the upcoming challenges in the field in face of the volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) world.