Business practices are not different for different types of enterprises. There are common practices which apply across the sectors and that is why such models were developed. There may be a few specific business parameters for certain industry. There are several models including the 2 quoted in your questions. Since these models are lengthy and complex, best thing is to yourself compare the two and make list of differences.The outcomes and goals of the two are same. I have developed an excellence model which is process based and easy to implement by any industry.

Thanks Rajendra,

Despite the evident advantages of these global standard models, one of the big hindrances for SMEs in their consideration in adopting these models is the cost which is relatively invariant relative to the size of the enterprise.  As a consequence, the adoption rate is greater among larger firms

Silburn

In my experience, there is an "awareness" gap from SMEs regarding the real impact of adopting one or the other model on their level of competition. SMEs are mostly pushed by the larger industry players whose supply chain they belong to. Therefore I observed an effective level of adoption where the industry value chain is forcing all the costituencies to comply with some form of external assessment. All in all, the ISO model is worldwide known, less costly, also from a consultancy perspective, and could be an entry level to the quality assurance domain. Manuela

The two models are meant for  similar objectives but vastly different in approach and application. EFQM is more detailed, based on eight concepts to lead to business excellence, it mentions five enablers, Leadership, Strategy, People, Partnerships and Resource  , and Processes, products and services and four criteria of Results. Evaluation Approach, RADAR calls for  detailed data collection, analysis and arriving at metrics. The criteria and the data collection make the model eminently suitable for large organizations and to some extent medium organizations planning growth to join the club of the large. Although EFQM out that the model is equally suitable for the SMEs, practical limitation inhibit  attention to all the criteria   as well as make a cumbersome costly exercise to install a data management  system . ISO systems on the other hand are simple to follow, execute and manage. The emphasis is more on promoting standardization and quality management in all the functional areas.These are high suitable for such  organizations as SME's, who have  'no-choice inherited leaders' (as family ownership) and limited resources to  install data management  systems. For more relevant details  Readers may refer to my recent publication, Managing World Class Operations ( Bloomsbury India) . Sardana       

No, it is wrong to put it  across the way you have expressed. ISO promotes Quality Management , through standardization, Quality assurance, systems and procedures and insists on demonstrating what you have prescribed as your manuals and processes.

EFQM on the other hand deals with achieving  Business Excellence of the organization. and that covers all domains: leadership, strategy,people management, Partnership and Resource management( read Suppliers), Processes, products and services. The problem is that many scholars expand EFQM to read as Quality Management; it is many years that Quality  was re-defined and interpreted to read Business Excellence. There isa vast difference between the two, that is Quality and Business Excellence( and now WCO!).

Sardana 

Thank you for sharing Prof Sardana,

There is a school of thought that rigid standardization inhibits creativity and innovation.  Which of the two models would you view as being more facilitative of continuous innovation within the firm ?  

Silburn

Without any iota of any doubt, it is the EFQM. There are two reasons:

1. Concept no. 4 that forms foundations of FFQM  refers to Harnessing Creativity and Innovation. EFQM  cannot proceed without creativity and innovation.

2. Creativity and innovation call for 'out of the box' thinking, not possible with rigidity of standardization.  

Sardana

EFQM is robust - and is agnostic to (a) business type (eg., B2B vs. B2C); (b) industry type (mfg., services, process, etc.); (c) which country a business is located in; (d) whether a business is domestic market focused or is also into international sales / activities; (e) and last but not the least, firm size.

So, to me the question is not whether an SME should adopt EFQM framework. Rather the question is: "When should an SME adopt EFQM framework?". An alternate question would be, "What is the maturity - towards quality / excellence - that is needed inside an SME to effectively deploy EFQM?"

Deploying quality and business excellence system is a journey. Best for an SME to start at the shallow end of the pool (i.e., ISO model) and "graduate" to the EFQM framework by building on (as well as sustaining), (a) a "quality mindset" and "quality culture" inside the firm; (b) deployment of quality tools as a routine; (c) continuously learning how to move up the quality ladder - across many facets of the business.

In addition to ISO (as a basic building block), I will recommend Kaizen and TPM - and force multipliers.

I am afraid some important aspects are missed out:

'EFQM  is based on a set of European  values. expressed in the European Convention on Human Rights(1953) and the European Social Charter -Revised( 1996)'.

We cannot stretch that all the countries follow the same values. Each country has a culture and values of its own. We have to be careful in adaptation. That is why there are so many GEMs.   

G D Sardana

Thanks Manuela,

Many large firms do act as locomotives in the value chain as well as in globally integrated supply chains. Where these large firms are more advanced in innovation, quality processes, high standards in operating practices, productivity and competitiveness then they can enforce SME's in their B2B chain to adopt their systems of quality standards.   On the other hand, it has also been observed/reported that in some chains, the script is reversed.  In some chains the SME partner may be more advanced than the large firm,  in their quality standards and processes,  and so in those cases are inhibited in their potential until,  if and when,  the larger firm catches up.  A case of the coaches encouraging the locomotives to be better.

Silburn

Prof Sardana,

The call should go forth for the development of a Global Business Excellence Model (GBEM)

Silburn

Historically, Baldrige came first on the scene because of the compulsions realized by the US industry to meet the challenges from the Japan industry. EFQM followed suit to protect the interests of the European economy, with clear emphasis  on weaknesses of the existing European operational  models. A number of other GEM cropped up , virtual derivatives of the Baldrige and EFQM , but aligned to the weaknesses of the industry from where these originated. With Globalization all over, and socialist economy diluted in ideology beyond recognition, there is a need to have a GEM that speaks of  business excellence beyond the barriers of national boundaries. I made an attempt(Refer 'Managing World Class Operations- Bloomsbury, 2014'), but I and my model have lacked the industry /institutional/state/publishing house support that GEM's enjoy massively.

    I agree that there is a need for a Global Business Excellence Model.  Iam willing to join a group of influential  individuals/ institutions/centres interested  in this endeavor. Any initiators! 

G D Sardana

Prof Sardana,

I would certainly love to be counted amongst the first to volunteer into this global collaborative effort

Truly a triple-helix initiative collaborating business, academia and government

Silburn

Been studying the Quality of Management construct (Ghoshal/Bartlett/Birkinshaw/Gibson) and its impact on innovation and productivity.

Article Linking Organizational Context and Managerial Action: The Di...

More recently the Managerial Quality (aka Managerial Capital or Quality of Management) variable has been found to be a very significant factor influencing productivity

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320546153_Quantifying_the_Productivity_Gains_from_Investing_in_Innovation_Technology_and_Managerial_Quality

Hi

A very important point is missing, i.e. the limitations of EFQM:

Despite the fact that there were many good applications of TQM or EFQM excellence models in HEIs across America, Europe and Asia, and despite the benefits of TQM in general and the EFQM excellence model in particular in improving the quality in HEIs, the above authors have faced many serious problems in applying the EFQM excellence model in HEIs; some other authors have addressed numerous problems of an implementation type in its critical operating factors and in its structure and components, and have thus argued that the TQM and EFQM excellence models are not the optimal/best approaches for assessing the quality of HEIs.

Furthermore, according to the research based on the findings of TQM or EFQM excellence models and which was carried out by Dahlgaard-Park et al., (2013) it was shown that “not all the findings in the literature are positive” and “there are no significant differences in financial results that could be found”. Some limitations and serious practical problems of using TQM or EFQM models in many different organizations including HEIs were also discussed and identified by numerous papers and reports.

In order to clarify the issue addressed by the question, we ask, what are the critical limitations and challenges of TQM or EFQM models in HEIs? The discussions on this issue, which are very famous and available in a large quantity of literature some of it being included in three published papers, will be described and reviewed in this section for this purpose.

One of the important papers that discussed some problems relevant to the principles of the TQM model was published by Amaral and Rosa (2007). They confirmed that “the EFQM Excellence model is associated with business; this confirmation was resisted by academics and did not receive broad-based support inside HEIs” (Rosa et al., 2012).

The second important paper touching upon our interest is the paper of Becket and Brooks (2008) which has drawn numerous and significant limitations based on most papers published worldwide for the period from 1998 to 2006 concerning this model. Some of the pronounced limitations are in the existence of many “challenges related to managerial and leadership skills which have been identified with both EFQM and TQM models. Furthermore, the bureaucratic structures of HEIs are reported to undermine the application of the models”; “there is a continued debate on the role of the student as customer or co-producer in the HE system and the impact this has on the measurement and management of quality” and “there is an inherent difficulty in quantifying the outputs of higher education for self-assessment purposes”(Becket and Brooks, 2008, p. 44-45).

According to Arjomandi et al., 2009, EFQM models are not a right choice for assessing the quality or the performance of HEIs factories for many reasons. Some of them proposed to study the companies/factories but not to estimate the quality of HEIs, yet, the issues of quality and performance in HEIs are multidimensional and not unified.

For more details, see

1- Z. A. Al-Hemyari, S. Al Bulushi and A. Al-Humairi (2017). Quality Teaching of Private HEIs: Comparative Study based on Students’ Perceptions and Expectations. Accepted in Int. J. of Quality and Innovation (Inderscience).

2- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2017). HEIs Quality Improvement Through Students and Academic Staff’s Perception: Data Analysis and Robustness of the Results. International Journal for Quality Research, Vol.11, No.2, pp.261-278(Serbia and Indexed in Elsevier).

3- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2017). Al-Farahidi Performative model to assess HEIs. 4th OQNHE Conference 2017, Muscat, pp.1-15.

4- Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2016). A Framework for Fostering the Quality of HEIs: Data Collection, Evaluation, Indication and Validation. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation, Vol.3, No.1, pp.42-66 (Inderscience).

Refer to my business excellence model.simple to understand and execute .It is available in my articles in my page.There is no evidence as per my research that Excellence models bring increased revenue and profits,. But it does help one stay in business that is competitive and changes oriented. Be it financial ,technical or marketing factors

Please refer to,

. Z. A. Al-Hemyari and A. M. Al-Sarmi (2016). A Framework for Fostering the Quality of HEIs: Data Collection, Evaluation, Indication and Validation. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation, Vol.3, No.1, pp.42-66 (Inderscience).

. Duque, L.C. (2014) ‘A framework for analyzing higher education performance: Students' satisfaction, perceived learning outcomes, and dropout intentions’, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, Vol.25 , No0.1-2, pp. 1-21.

. Dahlgaard-Park, Su, Mi, Chi-Kuang Chen, Jiun-Yi Jang and Jens Jörn Dahlgaard (2013) ‘Diagnosing and prognosticating the quality movement - a review on the 25 years quality literature (1987-2011)’, Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, Vol.24, No.1-2, pp. 1-18 [online]

http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:685225/FULLTEXT01.pdf

. Arjomandi, M., Kestel, C. and Grimshaw, P. (2009) ‘An EFQM excellence model for higher education quality assessment’, Proceedings of the 20th AAEE Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference: Engineering the Curriculum, Australia, Adelaide University, South Australia, 6-9 December, 2009, pp.1-7[online]

http://aaee.com.au/conferences/AAEE2009/PDF/INDEXSCR.PDF

.Becket, N. and Brookes, M. (2008) ‘Quality Management Practice in Higher Education – What quality are we actually enhancing?’, Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism Education, Vol. 7, No.1, pp. 40 – 54.

. Amaral, A. and Rosa, M. J. (2007) ‘A Self-Assessment of Higher Education Institutions from the Perspective of the EFQM Excellence Model’, In D.F. Westerheijden, B. Stensaker and Rosa, M. J. (EDS), Quality Assurance in Higher Education. Trends in Regulation, Translation and Transformation,Vol.20, pp.181-207. Dordrecht: Springer.

Regards,

Zuhair

Sharing a great new publication from the Asian Productivity Organisation intersecting Business Excellence Models with Public Sector Productivity