The EFQM Excellence Model

http://www.efqm.org/the-efqm-excellence-model

Its model / tool to achieve Total Quality Management

to achieve

Continuous quality improvements

Porter and Tanner (1996, p.119-148) have excellent answers to your questions.

Reference: Porter, L. J. & Tanner, S. J. (1996). Assessing business excellence. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann

The book is worth searching for. I have in my possession the first published version. However, the book may have been updated.

EFQM and MBNQA are two of the most original "performance excellence" framework for organization performance excellence. They have since been adopted and adapted by many countries into their "National Quality Awards" for business, health and education sectors (especially by MBNQA which is the more widely used framework). Their emphasis are on two main aspects of PROCESS and RESULT crietria and evaluation using ADLI/LeTCI for MBNQA and RADAR for EFQM assessment. culminating in a 1,000 point score for MBNQA.

At national level or globally, the business excellence frameworks are role models that promote holistic and balanced approach, system perspective, focus on the result with process improvement and adoption of comprehensive core values. For organizations, these frameworks help to see the gaps to make improvements - what and how should the organization improve or change?

However empirical studies show different results. M R Jones (2014, Quality Management Journal, 21, pp 49-61) analysed data of award applicants and found that MBNQA Category 4 (Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management) and Category 1 (Leadership) were the only contributing, while none of the other MBNQA factors mattered. Mellat-Parast (2015, International Journal of Production Economics, 164, pp 24-34) found that MBNQA model was not that good in predicting organizational results for the participating organizations, suggesting that usage of the model might not lead to a competitive advantage over time.

If TQM program of the organization is blindly following the framework or oriented towards winning an award, then it will soon run out of steam and will not show long-term results. Every organization is unique and needs soul searching for TQM program. (IMHO) The purpose of business excellence frameworks is to serve as guidelines.

Dear All

Thank you very much.

I would like to add,

model, its purposes and objectives?

Related literature shows that there are numerous organizations, companies and HEIs that have adopted and applied the total quality management (TQM) approach as a way to obtaining an understanding of their performance, the complexity of the teaching and learning processes and, as a way to benchmark their activities and output.

In fact, TQM approach is defined as“… a management approach of an organization, centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and aiming at a long run of success through customer satisfaction and benefits to all members of the organization and to society” (Becket and Brooks, 2008).

Despite the fact that the EFQM excellence model is a “non-prescriptive framework”, it was proposed and designed for the non-educational organizations and may be applied in any organization “as a non-prescriptive framework that establishes nine criteria (divided between enablers and results), suitable for any organization to use to assess progress towards excellence” (Becket and Brooks, 2008).

Although the EFQM Excellence Model was initially proposed in 1953 and revised in 1996 and applied in 1998 to measure the standards of 14 companies in Europe (Ghobadianand Woo, 1996;Arjomandi et al.,2009 and Cartmell, 2013)), the model has been adapted and applied in HEIs as a self-assessment and planning instrument. It may be noted here that the EFQM Excellence Model is based on the Total Quality Management (TQM) principles, approach and framework.

Furthermore, the EFQM Excellence Model has three components. The components are: eight core values, nine criteria (called enablers and results) and the use of the RADAR logic. In addition, the eight core principles were: Results Orientation, Customer Focus, Leadership and Constancy of Purpose, Management by Processes and Facts, People Development and Involvement, Continuous Learning, Innovation and Improvement, Partnership Development, and Corporate Social Responsibility (Clayton, 1993;Steed, 2002;Hides et al., 2004; Amaral and Rosa, 2007;Dahlgaard-Park et al., 2013; Jankal, 2014).

Also, the EFQM Excellence model uses nine criteria. The criteria are: Leadership; Strategy; People; Partnerships & Resources; Processes, Products & Services; Customer; Results; People Results; Society Results and Business Results. In fact, the first five criteria are called “enablers” and the last four criteria are called “results”.

For more details, see

Quality Teaching of Private HEIs: Comparative Study based on Students’ Perceptions and Expectations. Int. J. of Quality and Innovation Vol. 3, Nos. 2/3/4, pp. 209-228 (Inderscience).

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

Al-Farahidi Performative model to assess HEIs. 4th OQNHE Conference 2017, Muscat, pp.1-15.

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

Regards,

Zuhair

Regarding 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).