Copyright is owned by the Author of the thesis. Permission is given for a copy to be downloaded by an individual for the purpose of research and private study only. The thesis may not be reproduced elsewhere without the permission of the Author. 1 A GLOBAL STUDY ON HOW THE NATIONAL BUSINESS EXCELLENCE (BE) CUSTODIANS DESIGN BE FRAMEWORKS AND PROMOTE, FACILITATE, AND AWARD BE IN THEIR COUNTRIES A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Engineering at Massey University, Manawatu Campus, New Zealand Saad Ghafoor 2021 2 Table of Contents ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................................. 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................... 6 CHAPTER 1: THESIS INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................... 7 1.1 Chapter Introduction .................................................................................................................. 7 1.2 History of BE and its Use ........................................................................................................... 8 1.3 Definition of BE and the Scale of Prior Research .................................................................. 11 1.4 Identifying the Research Gap .................................................................................................. 12 1.5 Ontology and Epistemology of this Research ......................................................................... 14 1.6 Research Question, Aim, Objectives, and Scope .................................................................... 17 1.7 Structure of the Thesis .............................................................................................................. 18 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW .................................................................................................... 20 2.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................... 20 2.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ........................................................................................ 76 3.1. Chapter Introduction ................................................................................................................ 76 3.2. Research Paradigm ................................................................................................................... 76 3.3. Population and Sampling ......................................................................................................... 77 3.4. Developing the Survey and Structured Interview .................................................................. 78 3.5. Promoting the Research ........................................................................................................... 79 3.6. Data Collection, Validation, and Analysis .............................................................................. 80 3.7. Ethical Considerations .............................................................................................................. 81 CHAPTER 4: DESIGNING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE FRAMEWORKS ............................................ 82 4.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................... 82 4.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................. 116 CHAPTER 5: PROMOTING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE ..................................................................... 119 5.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................. 119 5.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................. 154 CHAPTER 6: FACILITATING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE ................................................................. 157 6.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................. 157 6.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................. 190 CHAPTER 7: AWARDING BUSINESS EXCELLENCE....................................................................... 193 3 7.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................. 193 7.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................. 240 CHAPTER 8: THE STRENGTHS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT OF THE BALDRIGE PERFORMANCE EXCELLENCE PROGRAM ................................................................ 243 8.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................. 243 8.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................. 283 CHAPTER 9: THE STRENGTHS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR IMPROVEMENT OF THE DUBAI GOVERNMENT EXCELLENCE PROGRAM ....................................................................................... 286 9.1. About the Chapter .................................................................................................................. 286 9.2. Chapter Highlights .................................................................................................................. 323 CHAPTER 10: THESIS CONCLUSION ................................................................................................. 326 10.1. Brief Overview of this Doctorate ....................................................................................... 326 10.2. Main Findings of the Thesis ............................................................................................... 327 10.3. Key contributions of this research ..................................................................................... 335 10.4. Outlook to Future Research Opportunities ...................................................................... 336 10.5. Reflection on the Research Approach ............................................................................... 337 THESIS REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................... 339 APPENDIX A: SURVEY AND STRUCTURED INTERVIEW INSTRUMENT .................................. 342 4 ABSTRACT Business Excellence (BE) is a philosophy and a collection of BE Frameworks (BEFs) for organisations to follow to achieve excellence in strategies, business practices, and stakeholder- related performance results, to ultimately become the best they possibly can be. This research aimed to investigate the current state of and best practices in designing BEFs and deploying (promoting, facilitating, and awarding) BE on a national and/or regional level. The aim of this research was met through first conducting a systematic review of BE literature followed by collecting data directly from BECs. A mixed methodology and pragmatic philosophy were used in this research, thus collecting and analysing both quantitative and qualitative data. With regards to the participants of the research, 29 BECs from 26 countries undertook a 46- question survey. Of the survey participants, 13 BECs also undertook optional follow-up online structured interviews. It was found that while the BE literature comprises of 415 journal papers, no research covers how BECs support BE in their countries. There are 74 countries and four regions with BE Custodians (BECs) that promote BE within their countries, of which 57 actively hold BE Awards (BEA) with their last award held in 2018 or after. A key finding of this research is that BECs focus more on their BEA activities than their BE promotion and facilitation activities and report low levels of BE awareness and usage levels. A general framework for designing and reviewing a BEF is provided along with recommendations for BECs to improve their BE promotion, facilitation, and award activities. The findings of this research will help the national BECs to better understand their strengths and opportunities for improvement and to learn from other BECs’ practices. This will assist the BECs 5 to better foster a culture of BE in their countries’ organisations that follow or aim to undertake a BE journey (of using a BE and adopting outstanding practices to achieve results) to ultimately benefit all of their stakeholders and lead to improved economic and societal benefits at a national level. 6 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I thank the Almighty for giving me the ability to undertake and complete my Ph.D. process. My Ph.D. journey would not have been possible without the support of my family; my parents who raised me, my siblings; who have always given me love and support throughout my life, and my nephew for bringing more motivation in my life. I am grateful to my supervisors Dr. Robin Mann, Professor Nigel Grigg, and Dr. Sanjay Mathrani. I am indebted for their mentorship, patience, time, and friendship. Their knowledge and experience were of immense use for me during my Ph.D. journey. I am also grateful to my superiors and colleagues whom I have had the opportunity to work with for their care and to all my close friends for their comradeship for their love. My decision for doing a Ph.D. came from my ambition to become part of the knowledge economy and to be able to contribute to society. I have always wanted to serve in positions and organisations that have a high impact on peoples’ lives, and my primary motive behind pursuing a Ph.D. was no different. Undertaking a Ph.D. journey undoubtedly affected my life for the better and my thought process. It was unchartered and unfamiliar territory for me that in every stage challenged my organisation, self-confidence, capacity, and determination, but only strengthened me in all these aspects as I rose to these challenges. Finally, I thank all the people whom I got to know over the last three and a half years as my university fellows. 7 CHAPTER 1: THESIS INTRODUCTION 1.1 Chapter Introduction This chapter comprises of six sub-sections that are a) a brief history of Business Excellence (BE) and its use, b) definition of BE and the scale of prior research, c) identifying the research gap, d) the ontology and epistemology of this research, e) the aim, objectives, and scope of this research, and f) the structure of this thesis. What does BE mean for an individual? Before getting into the terminologies and concepts, it is important to establish the relationship of this research to a common individual and the community. Throughout our lives, we interact with an economic ecosystem comprising of public, private, and not-for-profit organisations that provide us with the products and services we need to survive and grow. We are stakeholders of the organisations working in our country or region as either a customer, an employee, a taxpayer, a shareholder, and a member of the community and environment. The quality of products, services, systems, and processes of all these organisations thus directly affects our quality of life. Whether it is our healthcare system, education system, governance, utilities, or transportation, we cannot escape “quality” as the key determinant of our life experience. It is therefore essential to advance quality in organisations around the world. National custodians for fostering a culture of quality (also referred to as BE Custodians (BECs)) help organisations in their countries to continuously improve the quality of their products, services, systems, and processes. This research aims to help these custodians to better perform this role. 8 1.2 History of BE and its Use Before going into the definition and understanding of BE in the present day, here is a brief history of evolution of BE as shown in Table 1.1. Table 1.1: Evolution of BE Predominant Evolutionary Stage Approximate Timeline Major Features Quality Inspection (QI) From 1900s Quality inspectors were required to verify production quality by identifying poor-quality products, which were generally scrapped, reworked, or sold as lower quality products. Quality Control (QC) From 1920s The process of checking quality was shifted from the end of the production line to the point of production. There was a greater emphasis on written specifications, measurements, and standardisation. Quality was monitored to avoid variation from occurring, and inspection was subsumed into QC. Quality Assurance (QA) From 1960s More aspects, tools, and methods were developed to increase the systematisation of QC to satisfy customers’ needs and provide assurance of an effective quality system. This was done through comprehensive quality manuals, using the cost of quality, developing process control, and changing focus from detection to prevention of poor quality. Total Quality Management (TQM) From 1980s The concepts of QI, QC, and QA were introduced into all the business activities through the rigorous, systemic, and systematic application of quality management methods, tools, and techniques. TQM is the central theme or link between the older understanding of BE (QI, QC, and QA) and the present-day BE Frameworks (BEFs). The commonality in the understanding of BE and TQM is such that many present-day authors refer to the BEFs as TQM frameworks/models much like the developers of these frameworks (Abu-Rumman, 2020; Gomez et al., 2017; Mosadeghrad, 2014; Ionica et al., 2010). The terminology of BE and its present-day understanding emerged from the introduction of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), first awarded in 1988 (NIST 2020; Brown, 2017); and the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) 9 Excellence Award, first awarded in 1992 (EFQM, 2020; Eskildsen et al., 2000). The MBNQA and the EFQM govern the Malcolm Baldrige Excellence Framework (MBEF) and the EFQM Excellence Model respectively (shown in Figure 1.1), which are the two pioneering and widely used BEFs worldwide. Figure 1.1: The current EFQM Excellence Model (EFQM, 2020) and the current Baldrige Excellence Framework (NIST, 2020) BEFs are designed for organisations to improve their performance and management capabilities and to get sustainable results (Dahlgaard et al., 2013). These are holistic frameworks designed for use by organisations of all sizes, sectors, and industries. Following the footmarks of the two above- mentioned BEFs, several other unique BEFs were designed over the period by countries around the world, some of which are shown in Figure 1.2. 10 Figure 1.2: Illustration of various BEFs in use worldwide (Source: EFQM, 2020a) As a part of this research, it was found that as of January 2021, there are 14 unique BEFs in use around the world including the MBEF and the EFQM Excellence Model. Details regarding the uniquely designed BEFs and their adoption in original form or with major or minor amendments by other countries are covered in Chapter 4 of this thesis. With regards to the scale of BE usage, this research has found that as of January 2021, 74 countries and four regions have BECs that promote BE in their countries/ regions. Of these, 57 countries also have active BE Awards (BEAs) that were last held in 2018 or after (Ghafoor & Mann, 2021). With regards to how many organisations around the world use BEFs, only a careful estimate can be provided due to the lack of facts and figures on this matter. The BECs participating in this research reported that on average (median) 11-20% of their countries’ organisation follow a BE path. While it may be argued that only one to two out of every ten organisations follow a BE path, because this percentage is from a very large population, the number of organisations following a 11 BE path is estimated to be in tens of thousands worldwide. As for the organisations not using BE which make up for the 80-90% as reported by the BECs in this research, there are three main possible reasons for that: - 1. Organisations are not aware of a BEF being promoted and used in their country. 2. Organisations do not know how to undertake a BE journey. 3. Organisations do not find value in undertaking a BE journey as they do not find enough incentive in it. These points were incorporated in the objectives of the research which are elaborated more in the later sub-sections. 1.3 Definition of BE and the Scale of Prior Research Different authors of BE literature have defined BE slightly differently. For this research, a definition that captures the concept of BE holistically and plainly has been used. Foote et al. (2010) and Kim et al., (2010) defined BE as both a philosophy and a collection of guidance frameworks for organisations to follow to achieve excellence in strategies, business practices, and stakeholder- related performance results, to ultimately become the best they possibly can be. A significant amount of research has been carried out on BE. It was found that 114 journals have published 415 BE papers as of October 2020. The main journals that have published BE papers are ‘Total Quality Management and Business Excellence’, ‘The TQM Journal’, and ‘International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management’. More details on the BE papers and journals are provided in the literature review (Chapter 2) of this thesis. 12 1.4 Identifying the Research Gap As an integral part of this research, a literature review was carried out to identify the major themes, practices, and trends within the existing BE literature and how can this research add value to the existing BE literature. While this thesis contains a literature review (Chapter 3), it is important to briefly touch upon the findings from that literature review to build up to the aims and objectives of this research. Figure 1.3 shows the five themes and their sub-themes that the key pre-existing BE literature covers (Bou-Llusar et al., 2009; Dalimunthe et al., 2016; Kassem et al., 2019; Tickle et al.,2016; Hendricks & Singhal, 1996; Curkovic et al., 2000; Talwar, 2011; Foote et al., 2010). These themes were identified by a detailed analysis of the BE journal articles with the highest citation rate (average citations per year) that are provided in the literature review (Chapter 3) of this thesis. 13 Figure 1.3: Themes and sub-themes of the BE literature The literature review found that there is limited knowledge regarding the role of BECs and their BE activities. To advance the knowledge of BE, it is essential to develop an understanding of BECs’ roles and activities. It is important to study the BECs because they play a pivotal role in fostering a culture of BE in their country by designing/adopting/modifying a BEF, creating awareness regarding BE among organisations, enabling organisations to use a BEF, and recognising the organisations that show progress in their BE maturity levels (as shown in Figure 1.4 later on). This gap in the literature inspired this research to support BECs by studying what the current state of BE is worldwide, including the strengths and opportunities for improvement of the BECs, and to provide recommendations for improvement in light of the best practices of the various BECs. The findings of this research provide the following key benefits to the three mainstays: BECs, academia, and organisations. 14 For BECs: This research has identified the BE activities that BECs are strong in, the ones that are the most important for them to focus on for the next few years, the ones that have the highest impact, and the ones that they need to improve in along with recommendations for improvement. For academia: This is the only known account to the best of the researcher’s knowledge where data was collected directly from the BECs from around the world making this a radical contribution to the BE literature in the dimension of studying BECs and their activities. For organisations: Organisations that use BE will benefit from more effective BECs and those that do not use BE are more likely to become aware of BE and start using BE to become more productive and competitive. 1.5 Ontology and Epistemology of this Research Ontology in essence is “what something actually is?” which reflects what the researcher perceives is there to be known about (Bryman, 2015). This reflects the researcher’s understanding of the broad research area after conducting a literature review. In the current case, this concerns which aspects of BE can be explored. Figure 1.4 shows the ontology of this research which covers: a) why is it beneficial for organisations to use BE in the first place, which is to achieve performance results that would enable them to ultimately become world-class; b) the pivotal role that BECs play in enabling organisations to undertake a BE journey as discussed before, c) and how do these two processes interact with each other. 15 Figure 1.4: Ontology of this Research On the other hand, epistemology relates to the question “how to acquire knowledge?” and is hence the pathway to reach the ontological viewpoint discussed before (Bryman, 2015). Figure 1.5 shows the epistemology of this research which is how academia and the industry (BECs) must interact to carry out a valid investigation of the intended research objectives, the results of which are also useful for academia and the industry. The figure shows the cyclical nature of this research with academia and BECs feeding into each other. In terms of their interaction, while the academia identifies the gap in the existing knowledge and conducts the research by collecting data from the BECs, the BECs provide feedback to the academia on how to best present the results. 16 Figure 1.5: Epistemology of this Research Figure 1.6 shows the complete picture of how the epistemology of this research explained above helps to reach the ontological viewpoint explained before. It shows that the key connection between the two is the set of strengths and opportunities for improvement identified in the research that help the BECs to devise the BE strategy for their country or region. Figure 1.6: How the epistemology of this research helps to reach the ontological viewpoint of this research 17 1.6 Research Question, Aim, Objectives, and Scope The question that this research aims to answer is “what is the current state of and best practices in designing and deploying BE”. This research aimed to investigate the current state of and best practices in designing BEFs and deploying (promoting, facilitating, and awarding) BE on a national and/or regional level. Objectives were set to: - 1. Conduct a systematic review of BE literature to develop an understanding of the current state of BE literature and to identify the research gap; 2. Investigate the current state of and identifying best practices in how BECs: 2.1. Design their BEFs, 2.2. Promote BE in their countries, 2.3. Facilitate the use of BE in their countries, and 2.4. Award BE in their countries. In addition to these objectives, two BECs were studied in-depth to identify their strengths and opportunities for improvement. These were the United States-based Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (BPEP) and the United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Government Excellence Program (DGEP). The former was selected because it is the pioneer BEF and as the literature would suggests, has seen a decline with regards to its usage and the participation of organisations in the award over the years. The latter was selected because it is a relatively newer and highly popular BEF in the Middle East region which is mandatory to be used by the public sector organisations in the United Arab Emirates. 18 With regards to the scope of the study: - Only the BECs that actively undertook BE activities were invited to participate. A BEC was considered active and valid if: a) They administered a BEF that is based on sound TQM principles and follow the same understanding of BE as that of the Global Excellence Models (GEM) Council1. This means that awards that were named ‘excellence awards’ but did not address the core principles of BE (or did not use similar assessment methods) were excluded from this research. b) They actively held BEAs with the last award held in 2016 or there was clear evidence of an award being held in 2019 (because this study was conducted from September 2018 to August 2019). The custodians that were actively performing other BE activities but did not have an award were not included in this study because they would not be able to help in addressing the complete scope of the study. 1.7 Structure of the Thesis This thesis is compiled according to Massey University’s guidelines for ‘Thesis with Publication’. It comprises of ten chapters, of which seven are journal papers while the remaining three are ‘Thesis Introduction’, ‘Research Methodology’, and ‘Thesis Conclusion’. A summary of the thesis structure is provided in Table 1.2. 1 The GEM Council is an organisation consisting of custodians of the major BEFs and national BEA bodies. These organisations provide mutual learning and opportunities for sharing best practices to public and private organisations in their specific regions. The current members of the Council are Business Excellence Australia, Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (USA), China Association of Quality (China), CII- IQ (India), Dubai Government Excellence Program (UAE), EFQM (Europe), FNQ (Brazil), FUNDIBEQ (Iberian Peninsula and Latin America), IFCT (Mexico), JQA (Japan), Malaysia Productivity Corporation, and Enterprise Singapore (EFQM, 2020a). 19 Table 1.2: Chapters included in this thesis along with their publication status Chapter Number Description Publication Status 1 Thesis introduction N/A 2 A systematic review of BE literature Published 3 Research Methodology N/A 4 An investigation of how BECs design, adopt, and modify BEFs Published 5 An investigation of how BECs promote BE in their countries Prepared for journal submission 6 An investigation of how BECs facilitate the use of BE to help organisations in their countries to advance their BE maturity levels 7 An investigation of how BECs recognise and award BE in their countries 8 A study of the strengths and opportunities for improvement of the BPEP Published 9 A study of the strengths and opportunities for improvement of the DGEP Prepared for journal submission 10 Thesis conclusion N/A 20 CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. About the Chapter This chapter is a systematic literature review on Business Excellence (BE). It aims to identify and analyse all BE journal articles to help researchers and practitioners find relevant BE information more easily and guide them on which journals to publish in. With regards to selecting the approach for this literature review, Pautasso (2013) classified the ‘need for the type of literature review’ based on the amount of published research and the number of literature reviews on a topic. This classification guides researchers on what should a new literature review cover and helps to establish the aim of that literature review. The classification (shown in figure below) does not define ‘small’ and ‘large’ numbers of published research and literature reviews, therefore, the existing knowledge on a topic lies in a classification perceived by the researcher. Classification of the need of the type of literature reviews (Source: Pautasso, 2013) 21 Following a preliminary review of BE literature, the author of this thesis perceived that there is a large amount of published BE research, and a moderate to large number of literature reviews on BE. The researcher perceived the existing knowledge on BE to fall between the Quadrant 1 and Quadrant 4 as indicated in the figure. In any case, there is a significant number of studies that constitute the body of BE knowledge. This implied that to add value to the existing knowledge, the new literature review had to be highly exhaustive and inclusive of all BE papers (including literature reviews). A systematic approach to conducting literature review identifies, selects, and critically appraises research to answer a clearly formulated question (McKenzie et al., 2012). This approach was used to bring rigour and breadth to the BE literature review. A literature review must follow a clear definition of the concept being studied to ensure that it includes only the most relevant papers. This literature review used the same understanding of BE as advanced by the GEM Council, which is an organisation consisting of custodians of the major BEFs and national BEA bodies. A paper was considered a BE paper if: a) The paper was predominantly (at least 50%) focused on BE; b) The research was related to BEFs (used to assess organisations for national BE awards) and follow a similar design and assessment methodology as advocated by the GEM Council. Therefore, researching their theory or use or proposing a development or variant of these established frameworks supported by research validating any proposed change. This chapter was produced as a peer-reviewed journal article and was submitted to the Total Quality Management and Business Excellence journal. Following a peer-review decision of ‘revise and resubmit’, the chapter/paper was revised, resubmitted, and was subsequently accepted for publication. This chapter/paper can be cited as: 22 Ghafoor, S., Grigg, N. P., Mathrani, S., & Mann, R. (2020). A bibliometric and thematic review of business excellence journal papers from 1990 to 2020. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 1-33. 23 A Bibliometric and Thematic Review of Business Excellence Journal Papers from 1990 to 2020 Saad Ghafoorab*, Nigel P. Grigga, Sanjay Mathrania and Robin Mannab aDepartment of Operations and Engineering Innovation, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand; bCentre for Organisational Excellence Research, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand This paper presents a bibliometric and thematic review of journal papers specifically related to BE frameworks (BEFs) that are used for national BE awards and advocated by the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council. The paper will help researchers and practitioners locate relevant BE data and information more easily and guide them on which journals in which to publish them. The research includes an assessment of the average citation rate per year of BE papers. 10,089 potential BE papers were initially identified from a keyword search of the Elsevier database, to ultimately identify 415 as BE papers. These papers were analysed and have subsequently been made available to all researchers in an excel file. This research found that: the peak in publishing BE papers was in 2019; Total Quality Management and Business Excellence is the most popular journal for publishing BE papers; the most popular research area is studying “Design of BEFs” and there is potential for future research on “Impact of BE”; and the average number of citations per year for a BE paper is 2.1, with the most cited paper achieving an average of 29.6 citations per year. The research includes recommendations on how researchers can increase their citation rate in this area. Keywords: Business excellence, excellence award, excellence initiative, excellence framework, excellence model, MBNQA, EFQM, GEM Council 24 1. Introduction What is Business Excellence? Business Excellence (BE) has been defined as both a philosophy and a collection of guidance frameworks for organisations to follow to achieve excellence in strategies, business practices, and stakeholder related performance results, to ultimately become the best they possibly can be (Foote et al., 2010; Kim et al., 2010). The terminology of BE and its understanding in the present day has evolved since the introduction of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA), first awarded in 1988 (NIST 2020; Brown, 2017); and the EFQM Excellence Award (EFQM, 2020), first awarded in 1992 (Eskildsen et al., 2000). Theoretical foundations of BE and TQM With respect to the theoretical foundations of BE, it is first important to understand how BEFs evolved from quality management. This will be followed by a discussion on the management theories that BE researchers base their research on. Rahber and Ralston (1984) described Total Quality Management (TQM) (which is the central theme or link between the older understanding of BE and the present-day BEFs in this explanation) as a “revolutionary management philosophy”, which according to Martinez-Lorente et al. (1998), was the Western countries’ response to fierce competition from Japan, as Western companies began to learn how Japanese companies had achieved success in manufacturing products of superior quality and lower cost. TQM evolved through quality inspection, control, and assurance chronologically as highlighted in blue in Table 2.1 (e.g. Dahlgaard et al., 2008; Dale et al, 2016). Each era did not replace but rather subsumed the previous one as amply illustrated by Dale et al, (2016). Some of the major literature-based proponents of TQM describe similar TQM principles 25 as highlighted in green in Table 2.1 (Mann, 2008). According to Mele and Colurcio (2006), these TQM principles then became the building blocks of the major BEFs which were originally called TQM Frameworks (Para-González et al., 2016; Conti, 2007), but over time became more systemic with a greater emphasis on business results (Lee et al, 2006), and the frameworks and awards were re-labelled as BE to emphasise their role in supporting the success of businesses (Grigg & Mann, 2008). The core values and concepts of the Baldrige Excellence Framework and EFQM Excellence Model are highlighted in yellow in Table 2.1 (NIST, 2019b; EFQM, 2013) and the Baldrige Excellence Framework and EFQM Model are shown in Figure 2.1. Table 2.1 shows that while there may not be a one-to-one correspondence between the TQM principles and the core values and concept of BE, there is an overlap between them. Table 2.1: The stages of evolution of TQM from Quality Management to BE (blue highlight), the prime elements of TQM (green highlight), and the core values and concepts of the Baldrige Excellence Framework and EFQM Excellence Model (yellow highlight) Source Reference Predominant evolutionary stage and major proponents Approximate timeline Major features Stages of TQM evolution (e.g. Dahlgaard et al., 2008; Davies, 2003; Dale et al, 2016) Quality Inspection (I) From 1900s With task specialisation in early industrialisation, inspectors were required to verify production quality. Employees identify poor-quality products, which are generally scrapped, reworked, or sold as lower quality products. Quality Control (QC) From 1920s Upstream process control at the point of production reduced the need for end-of- line inspection, and inspection became more sampling-based. Greater emphasis on written specifications, measurements, and standardisation. Quality was monitored to avoid variation from occurring, and inspection was subsumed into QC. 26 Quality Assurance (QA) From 1960s Increasing systematisation and proceduralisation of QC and addition of more aspects, tools, and methods as developed by the major quality gurus, with an aim to satisfy customers’ needs and provide assurance of an effective quality system. This was done through (e.g.) comprehensive quality manuals, using the cost of quality, developing process control, and changing focus from detection to prevention of poor quality. Total Quality Management (TQM) From 1980s The ideas, components, and concepts of quality inspection, control, and assurance were brought into all business activities through the rigorous, systemic, and systematic application of quality management methods, tools, and techniques. Mann (2008) provides descriptions of key quality and management principles illustrating the development of TQM, five are provided here. Armand V. Feigenbaum’s book on Total Quality Control (Feigenbaum, 1951) 1951 Feigenbaum’s book, first published in 1951, was the first to introduce Total Quality Control which comprised of quality leadership, company-wide introduction, continuous motivation, education, and measurement. W. Edward Deming’s 14- points for management 1986 Deming’s 14 points provided some of the foundations for TQM: creating consistency of purpose of quality; adopting the new philosophy; avoiding dependence on quality inspection; focusing on minimising manufacturing cost by working with a single supplier; constantly improving planning, production, and service processes; training on the job; adopting institute leadership; driving out fear; breaking down barriers between staff areas; eliminating slogans for the workforce; eliminating numerical quotas and goals; fostering pride of workmanship; instituting self-improvement for everyone; and putting everybody to work towards transformation. J. Cullen and J. Hollingum’s book on Total Quality (1987) 1987 One of the many books published in the mid-1980’s onwards described Total Quality as Leadership from the top, effectively managing cost of quality, 27 customer focus, continuously improving all operations, and involving everyone in quality improvement. John S. Oakland’s book on TQM (1989) 1989 One of the early books on TQM describing the key elements as Management commitment, quality management systems, tools (SPC), and teamwork. L.D. Pfau’s work on TQM (1989) 1989 One of the early research papers on TQM describing the key elements as Long-term perspective, the commitment of top management, employment of systems approach, training and tools, participation, new measurements and reporting systems, cross-organisational communication, leadership. Core Values and Concepts of Baldrige Excellence Framework in 1992 and 2019 (NIST, 2019b), and Fundamental Concepts of the EFQM Excellence Model (EFQM, 2013; EFQM, 2003) Core Values and Concepts of the original Baldrige Excellence Framework which was referred to as a TQM Model at that time 1988 The Core Values and Concepts of the Baldrige Excellence Framework were not articulated in 1988, however, they were in 1992 and were as much a part of the original Baldrige Excellence Framework in 1988 (NIST, 2019b). These Core Values and Concepts were customer- driven quality leadership, continuous improvement, full participation, fast response, design quality and prevention, long-range outlook, management by fact, partnership development, and public responsibility. Fundamental concepts of the 2003 EFQM Excellence Model 2003 These were: results orientation; customer focus; leadership and constancy of purpose; management by processes and facts; people development and involvement; continuous learning, improvement, and innovation; partnership development; and corporate social responsibility. Fundamental concepts of the 2013 EFQM Excellence Model 2013 The fundamental concepts of the EFQM Excellence Model are not articulated in the latest (2019) version, however, they were in the 2013 version, which are adding value for customers; creating a sustainable future; developing organisational capability; harnessing creativity and innovation; leading with vision, inspiration, and Integrity; managing with agility; succeeding through 28 the talent of people, and sustaining outstanding results. The Core Values and Concepts of the current Baldrige Excellence Framework 2019 These were systems perspective, visionary leadership, customer-focused excellence, valuing people, organisational learning and agility, focus on success, managing for innovation, management by fact, societal contributions, ethics and transparency, and delivering value and results. Figure 2.1: The current EFQM Excellence Model (EFQM, 2020a) and the current Baldrige Excellence Framework (NIST, 2020) To explore these concurrent themes in greater detail, the VOSviewer2 research mapping tool was used to identify co-occurring keywords in the BE papers identified in this research. Figure 2.2 shows the changes in the popularity of key terms in the BE literature over time which mirrors the evolution of BE from quality to TQM and then to BE. The map shows the 18 most used keywords 2 VOSviewer is a quantitative analytical tool for creating bibliometric maps of science that visualises relationships between different metadata of publications’ such as authors and keywords (Van Eck & Waltman, 2011) 29 with the strength of their linkages (co-occurrence) represented by lines while the color of a keyword represents the average year of publication of the BE papers that used that keyword. The figure illustrates that the terminologies of Quality, Quality Control, and Quality Assurance (purple highlight) dominated the BE literature with the average publication around the year 2004. These were replaced by Total Quality Management (blue highlight) in the BE literature with the average publication around the year 2008, and this was replaced by Business Excellence (yellow highlight) in the BE literature with the average publication around the year 2012. As a limitation of the tool, the keywords that represent the same concept (such as TQM and Total Quality Management, and EFQM and the European Foundation for Quality Management) cannot be merged and are thus mentioned separately as they are used in the papers. Figure 2.2: VOSviewer network map visualisation of strength of link between keywords (illustrated by lines) and average publication years of their papers (illustrated by color of the text boxes) 30 In terms of academic research, it is found that different researchers have studied BE considering different management theories. For example, Kanji’s (2008) research for measuring excellence was grounded in Systems Theory (which suggests that an organisation is a complex arrangement of elements making a system, and changing one part of the system affects other parts or the whole system, Von Bertalanffy, 1971). This view was followed by Khoo and Tan (2002), who found a relationship between the Systems Theory and BE. Similarly, Ruiz-Carrillo and Fernandez-Ortiz (2005) studied and proved linkage between each of the EFQM Excellence Model criteria and the Resource-Based View (RBV) theory (which suggests that the resources of an organisation are key to superior firm performance, competitive advantage, and strategic success, Barney, 2001). This view was followed by authors like Oakland and Tanner (2008) and Idris et al. (2003), who used the RBV as the base management theory for BE in their researches. While these examples of theories are associated with the overall BE and TQM philosophies, there are separate theories related to the specific criteria of BEFs. For example, there are several theories of leadership (which is a criterion in the EFQM Excellence Model and the Baldrige Excellence Framework) such as trait theory, behavioral theory, transactional theory, transformational theory, and situational theory (Yukl & Van Fleet, 1992). In conclusion, as to its theoretical foundations, there may not be specified an explicit base theory of BE as it is a pragmatic model designed and developed over time (such as every two or three years depending on the framework’s governing body) to assess and guide organisations to higher levels of performance from learning from best practices. The BEFs are designed based on input from organisations that are considered as industry leaders, organisations that use BE, BE experts, BE assessors, with consideration of changing megatrends, and BE research. The BEFs are based 31 primarily on practical rather than theoretical considerations as explained by Conti (2007), who was one of the key architects of the EFQM Excellence Model. BE Frameworks (BEFs) in use worldwide According to research conducted by (Ghafoor & Mann, 2020), fifty-six 56 countries operate an award system based on a BEF. With some countries having more than one BE custodians (BECs)3, there are a total of 67 BECs worldwide. The number of BECs following different types of BEFs is shown in Figure 2.3. Two major frameworks dominate this landscape: The (European- originated) EFQM Excellence Model is utilised by 23 custodians and the (US-originated) Baldrige Excellence Framework is utilized by 10 custodians. These two frameworks serve as the basis for the majority of the world’s BEFs with 16 custodians using modified frameworks that are based on either of these two frameworks. From amongst these, 11 custodians use frameworks that have been derived from the Baldrige Excellence Framework and five custodians use frameworks that have been derived from the EFQM Excellence Model. 3 organisations that are responsible for promoting and facilitating the use of BE 32 Figure 2.3: Types of BEFs worldwide (Source: Ghafoor and Mann, 2020) Rationale for the present study There are published literature reviews in BE related areas such as TQM, however, there has not been a literature review solely focused on identifying research related to BEFs as recognised and promoted by the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council (the detail of paper-selection criteria is provided in the methodology section of this paper) covering the period from when they were first developed to 2020. The GEM Council is an organisation consisting of custodians of the major BEFs and national BEA bodies. These organisations provide mutual learning and opportunities for sharing best practices to public and private organisations in their specific regions (EFQM, 2020). The current members of the GEM Council are Business Excellence Australia, Baldrige Performance Excellence Program (USA), China Association of Quality (China), CII-IQ (India), Dubai Government Excellence Program (UAE), EFQM (Europe), FNQ (Brazil), FUNDIBEQ (Iberian Peninsula and Latin America), IFCT (Mexico), JQA (Japan), Malaysia Productivity Corporation, and Enterprise Singapore (EFQM, 2020b). 33 As the frameworks are used by BE custodians as enablers to drive improvements in the productivity and competitiveness of nations (Adebanjo et al., 2015) and they assist thousands of organisations worldwide (Dahlgaard et al., 2013), it is timely to review all the research that has been conducted in this area for the benefit of researchers, practitioners and BE custodians. This paper presents findings from the literature review of a wider study being undertaken under the title of “Excellence Without Borders” which has the support of the GEM Council. Research aim, scope, objectives The research aimed to identify and analyse all academic journal papers that have been published on BE to help researchers and practitioners find relevant BE information more easily and guide them on which journals to publish in. In terms of the scope, the literature review aims to identify all the academic journal papers on BE papers that have been published in the past up to September 2020. As explained in the methodology section, the scope of the review was delimited to papers based on research related to BEFs as recognised and promoted by the GEM Council. To achieve the research aim, the following research objectives were set: 1. To identify all the academic journal papers that have been published on BE (that fit within the research scope), 2. To identify the number and percentage of papers published by year, 3. To identify the number and percentage of citations by year, 4. To identify the highest cited BE papers, 5. To identify the most popular journals for BE papers, 34 6. To identify the journals with the highest international rankings that BE journals are published in, 7. To identify the average citations per year for BE papers in BE journals, 8. To examine the relationship between international journal rankings and citation rates for BE papers, 9. To identify the researchers that have published the most BE papers, and 10. To classify the highest impact BE papers based on their research area. 2. Methodology Definition of BE for the present research Various terminologies for BE are in common use. These include Organisational Excellence (Hakkak & Ghodsi, 2015, Alfaro-Saiz et al., 2011; Irani et al., 2004; McAdam, 2000); Performance Excellence (Asif & Searcy, 2014; Evans & Lindsay, 2013; Evans, 2013; Badri et al., 2006); and TQM (Yu et al., 2020; Nasim et al., 2020; Androniceanu, 2017; Camison, 1996). The term BE has meaning in the sense of both a proper and a common noun. Business Excellence (proper noun), refers to a recognised BEF or approach, while business excellence (common noun) can also be used in reference to the outcome of undertaking best practices. For example, “through our improvement methods, we have achieved business excellence”, as compared with “we are implementing Business Excellence”. The first statement does not necessarily include the use of a formalised BEF, whilst the second does carry that implication. For the present research, only published papers based on research related to internationally recognized BEFs (used to assess organisations for national business excellence awards) and follow a similar design and assessment methodology as advocated by the GEM Council were included. 35 With respect to this understanding and the tens of thousands of organisations that use these frameworks, the major components of BE are: - a) The BE criteria or categories that are integrated into a holistic framework of organisational excellence displaying both business enablers and business results, and underpinning these are the core values and concepts of excellence (Baldrige) (NIST, 2020) or fundamental concepts of excellence (EFQM) (EFQM, 2020a). The Baldrige criteria comprise of Leadership, Strategy, Customers, Workforce, Operations, Measurement, Analysis, and Knowledge Management, and Results. The new version of the EFQM excellence model (introduced in 2019) comprises of these criteria; Purpose, Vision and Strategy, Organisational Culture and Leadership (under the direction category), Engaging Stakeholders, Creating Sustainable Value, Driving Performance and Transformation (under the execution category), Stakeholder Perceptions, and Strategic and Operational Performance (under results category). The previous version of the EFQM Excellence Model comprised of Leadership, People, Strategy, Partnership and Resources, and Processes, Products and Services as enablers and People Results, Customer Results Society Results, and Business Results. b) Assessment methodology; whereby a scoring mechanism of 1000 points is provided and guides organisations on assessment against the framework, from simple self-assessments to rigorous externally validated assessments for national BEAs. Both frameworks 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 Excellence Framework. In both types of frameworks, assessment scores of 600+ are considered as highly mature in terms of BE and organisations scoring at this 36 level having the opportunity to become recognised at a national award level (BQF, 2020; Brown, 2009). Selection of papers Seven steps were followed to select papers for this review, as shown in Figure 2.4. Figure 2.4: Process diagram for short listing papers for review 37 For Step 1, the Elsevier Scopus Database was selected as the electronic library to search for BE journal papers as this includes all relevant journals. For the keyword search, it was decided to search only the titles of the papers (to retrieve a manageable number of papers in the search result) and 29 keywords were selected to minimize the chances of any BE papers being missed. These words and phrases included but were not limited to those used in previous literature reviews related to BE (these reviews will be discussed later in the paper). The keywords (or phrases) were; ‘business excellence’, ‘business excellence award’, ‘EFQM’, ‘European Foundation for Quality Management’, ‘MBNQA’, ‘Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award’, ‘Malcolm Baldrige’, ‘Baldrige criteria’, ‘excellence framework’, ‘Baldrige excellence framework’, ‘Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence’, ‘Baldrige’, ‘organisational excellence’, ‘National Quality Awards’, ‘excellence awards’, ‘excellence model’, ‘EFQM Excellence Model’, ‘self-assessment’, ‘performance excellence’, ‘TQM awards’, ‘quality awards’, ‘enterprise excellence’, ‘operational excellence’, ‘organisational excellence’, ‘total quality management’, ‘excellence program’, ‘business excellence program’, ‘business excellence initiative’, and ‘excellence initiative’. For step 2, the papers with “Business, Management, and Accounting” as their publication category were selected as this is the only category that was likely to contain BE related papers. For step 3, the papers with document type “Article” or “Review” were shortlisted to screen out items like news articles, conference papers, short surveys, notes, editorials, and book chapters. Step 4 involved limiting the source type to “Journal”. The purpose of steps 3 and 4 was to ensure that only peer-reviewed papers were included. Step 5 involved retaining only English language papers. For step 6, the document type of all the documents retrieved was examined. Some of the documents included news items and award proceedings that were inaccurately classified under 38 journal articles in the database. Finally, step 7 involved manually reviewing each paper to ensure the research complied with the following criteria: a) The paper was predominantly (at least 50%) focused on BE; b) The research was related to BEFs (used to assess organisations for national business excellence awards) and follow a similar design and assessment methodology as advocated by the GEM Council. Therefore, researching their theory or use or proposing a development or variant of these established frameworks supported by research validating any proposed change. A final list of 415 BE-focused papers was selected. Figure 2.4 shows the number of papers reducing at each level of screening. Once these papers were identified, the objectives of this study were achieved by using the methods as explained in Table 2.2. Availability and selection bias and mitigation: A systematic review is subject to availability bias due to the possibility of some papers not included in the database being used (Scopus). Web of Science (WoS) is another similar database, however, only Scopus is used for this study because it includes a wider spectrum of journals than WoS (Falagas et al., 2007) and has a higher number of journals with total 36,377 journals (Scopus, 2020) compared to WoS with 13,000 journals (Web of Knowledge, 2020). The study is also subject to selection bias which means that different researchers would select different sets of papers owing to their interpretation of the selection criteria (Heckman, 1979). To mitigate this bias, the authors cross-checked the papers to ensure that the selected papers all followed the criteria established for a BE paper (as stated in the previous sub-section). The main author did the primary selection of 39 papers which as checked by co-authors to make sure that the criteria were being followed accurately. Table 2.2: Purpose and methods of analyse of BE papers Objective Methodology 1 BE papers were identified by using the seven-step approach explained above. 2 and 3 Publication and citation trends of BE papers were analysed. Graphs show the number and percentage of papers and citations by year. 4 The impact of BE papers was measured by calculating the average number of citations per year per paper. This was calculated by dividing the number of total citations of a paper by the number of years since it had been published. This measure was used instead of the number of raw citations to eliminate bias favouring the older published papers over the newer ones. 5 The popularity of a journal was measured by the number of papers that had been published in it. 6 The Academic Journal Guide (AJG), respected by one of the leading education systems (the United Kingdom) (CharteredABS.org, 2020), was used for measuring journal quality. The AJG rating system rates a journal as 4*, 4, 3, 2, or 1 with 4* being a highly distinctive journal and 1 being a more ordinary journal. 7 The average number of citations per year per BE paper was calculated for each journal. This was calculated by adding the average citations per year for all the papers in a journal divided by the number of papers in the journal. This helps to inform researchers about the expected citations on a paper per year if published in various journals. Another journal impact measurement SCImago has been used in this section. SCImago Journal & Country Rank is a publicly available portal that includes journal and country scientific indicators based on the information contained in the Scopus database (SJR, 2020). SCImago provides an h-index value for each journal, which is the number of papers published in that journal with the same number of citations. For example, a journal with an h-index value of 10 has 10 papers with at least 10 citations each. Whilst AJG is considered a more sophisticated journal quality measurement approach, it does not classify all the journals that have published BE papers as it does not show which journals failed to meet its criteria or have not applied to be assessed for an AJG rating. For this reason, the SCImago approach has also been used to include journals that have not been included by AJG. 8 To compare the AJG rating with the citation rate, the citation rate of each AJG rating category was calculated. This was calculated by adding the average citations per year for all the papers in all the journals of an AJG rating category divided by the number of papers in all the journals of that rating category. 9 The number of papers published by authors was used as the measure of the most active authors in BE. A list of authors that have published 5 or more papers is provided along with their affiliations and areas of interest. 40 10 VOSviewer was initially used to identify themes in the BE literature, however, this was useful in identifying only the generic areas because the tool can identify keywords of the papers and identify the strength of their links by calculating their co-occurrence (this analysis is shown in the introduction of this paper). However, it has a limitation that it does not classify papers based on their research area, hence, it is not best suited for a thematic analysis of BE literature. For this, we used the qualitative approach in which we examined individual papers. Cochran’s Sample Size Formula (William, 1977) was used to calculate the sample size which was found to be 79 with 95% confidence level and a confidence interval of 10. The 79 highest impact BE papers were examined to classify them based on their research area and their BEFs of study. Positioning the present research in the context of previous research Seven literature reviews have been published that are related to BE as shown in Figure 2.5. The authors reviewed these literature reviews to make sure that a similar literature review had not been undertaken and no relevant journal papers were missed out from the authors’ literature search. From reviewing these, it was evident that no other literature review had set such a specific scope of identifying all journal papers related to internationally recognized BEFs. Figure 2.5: Time periods of previous literature reviews compared with this research Below are brief overviews of these prior literature reviews and a brief description of how they are different from this research. 41 Table 2.3: Overview of previous literature reviews and their differences with this research Source Study design and differences with this paper’s literature review Dereli et al. (2011) Analysed 1,132 papers published in the period 1995-2008 in the journal of Total Quality Management and Business Excellence (volumes 6 to 19). This review only covered one journal, did not specifically identify (or distinguish) BE papers, and did not select papers based on a definition of BE (instead selected papers based on the wider topic of quality from within the journal). Lo and Chai (2012) Investigated core themes in the wider area of quality management research (from the period 1996-2010) and analysed 1165 papers published in the journal of Total Quality Management and Business Excellence (volumes 1 to 21). This review only covered one journal, did not specify (or distinguish) BE papers, and did not select papers based on a definition of BE (instead included all the papers published in the journal provided they had complete metadata information). Doeleman et al. (2014) Conducted a meta-analysis of 24 studies in the field of BE from the period 2002-2012. This paper only included papers based on the EFQM Excellence Model which is only a sub- set of BE literature. Hussain et al. (2018) Conducted a systematic review of BE from 1995 to 2015 identifying 205 journal papers that were classified in groups of 10 dominant themes. This review selected papers if the words business excellence, performance excellence, organisational excellence, or enterprise excellence were in the paper titles. This approach meant many BE papers would likely have been missed, for example, those with EFQM or MBNQA in their titles. Additionally, the scope of the review differed from the authors and the understanding of BE as advocated by the GEM Council. Unnikrishnan et al. (2019) This literature review covers the story of transition through the field of TQM to performance management and then to BE for the period 1985-2018. It provided several definitions and understandings of BE from the literature. Metaxas and Koulour (2019) Conducted a descriptive analysis of literature on measuring BE including TQM, BE Models, SERVQUAL, and other quality-related models compiling a total of 139 papers from 39 refereed journals from the period 1990-2016. Its review had a wider definition of BE and included assessment approaches that were not aligned to the BEF assessments advocated by the GEM Council. 42 Suárez et al. (2017) Conducted a literature review on the EFQM (during the period 1991-2015). While the relevance of the 53 papers on BE included in this study is without question, the scope of the study is limited to the EFQM Excellence Model only. 3. Findings from the current review This section of the paper is divided into sub-sections representing the objectives of this research. Objective 1: To identify all the academic journal papers that been published on BE (that fit within the research scope) Following the search criteria, 415 journal papers were identified as BE papers in this research. To obtain the maximum value from the authors’ research, in addition to the analysis that follows, the full data set and tables from this research have been made publicly available in an excel file for easy searching and referencing by BE researchers (Ghafoor et al., 2020). Objective 2: To identify the number and percentage of papers published by year Figure 2.6: Number of papers published by year (up to September 2020) 43 Figure 2.6 shows the number of BE journal papers published by year. The oldest BE paper identified in this research was published in 1990 which investigated whether the US needs the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (Henry, 1990). Of all the papers, 105 or 25.3% of the papers have been published in 2016 or after. Almost half (49.8%) of the papers in this research have been published in or after 2011. The figure shows that the number of publications on BE has increased with an average of 20.7 papers per year published between 2011 and 2020 (with peaks in 2011 and 2019) compared to an average of 14.4 papers per year between 2001 and 2010 and 3.9 papers per year between 1990 and 2000. However, this is a trend common with many research topics given the growth of journals and published papers. Objective 3: To identify the number of citations by year Figure 2.7: Number of citations by year (up to September 2020) Figure 2.7 shows the number of citations of the published BE journal papers by year. It can be inferred from Figures 2.4 and 2.5 that the years that have published a higher number of papers do not necessarily have a higher number of citations. The number of citations peaked between 2000 and 2003. The reason for this peak may be that BE became more popular during this time (as 44 shown by an increase in the number of papers during this time in Figure 2.6), and the later papers’ had to reference the papers published during this time. On the other hand, the low number of citation between 1990 and 1995 as shown in Figure 2.7 can be attributed to two factors; a) the low number of papers during this period, and b) the journals that these papers were published in generally have a low citation rate of 0.4 citations per year per BE papers compared to the overall average of 2.1 citations per year per BE paper across all journals. Objective 4: To identify the highest cited BE papers From the list of all the published BE journal papers identified in this research, a list of ten papers with the highest average citations per year is provided in Table 2.4. The list includes a reference of the paper, year of publication, number of citations, and its main research area. The main research areas and their sub-research areas given in the rightmost column of this table are explained under the objective 10 and Table 2.10. Six papers have more than 10 citations per year on average, 36 papers were found to have between five and 10 citations per year on average and, 53 papers were found to have three to five citations per year on average. Table 2.4: Top 10 papers with the highest average citations per year A v er a g e C it a ti o n s p er Y ea r Source Paper Reference Y ea r P u b li sh ed N u m b er o f C it a ti o n s Main Research Area (See Table 2.10) 29.6 Bou-Llusar, J.C., Escrig-Tena, A.B., Roca-Puig, V., & Beltrán-Martín, I., 2009. An empirical assessment of the EFQM Excellence Model: Evaluation as a TQM framework relative to the MBNQA Model. Journal of Operations Management, 27(1), pp.1-22. 2009 326 Design of BEFs 45 21 Dalimunthe, D.M., & Muda, I., 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. International Journal of Applied Business and Economic Research. 2016 84 Design of BEFs & Impact of BE 17.4 Westerveld, E. (2003). The Project Excellence Model®: linking success criteria and critical success factors. International Journal of project management, 21(6), pp.411-418. 2003 296 Design of BEFs 12.7 Wilson, D.D., & Collier, D.A., 2000. An empirical investigation of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award causal model. Decision sciences, 31(2), pp.361- 383. 2000 254 Design of BEFs 12.3 Dahlgaard, J.J., Chen, C.K., Jang, J.Y., Banegas, L.A., & Dahlgaard-Park, S.M., 2013. Business excellence models: Limitations, reflections and further development. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 24(5-6), pp.519-538. 2013 86 Design of BEFs 11.3 Hendricks, K.B., & Singhal, V.R., 1996. Quality awards and the market value of the firm: An empirical investigation. Management science, 42(3), pp.415-436. 1996 271 Impact of BE 9.9 Flynn, B.B., & Saladin, B., 2006. Relevance of Baldrige constructs in an international context: A study of national culture. Journal of Operations Management, 24(5), pp.583-603. 2006 139 Design of BEFs 9.7 Fry, L.W., Latham, J.R., Clinebell, S.K., & Krahnke, K., 2017. Spiritual leadership as a model for performance excellence: a study of Baldrige award recipients. Journal of Management, Spirituality & Religion, 14(1), pp.22-47. 2017 29 Design of BEFs 9.4 Meyer, S.M., & Collier, D.A., 2001. An empirical test of the causal relationships in the Baldrige Health Care Pilot Criteria. Journal of Operations Management, 19(4), pp.403-426. 2001 179 Design of BEFs 8.8 Flynn, B.B., & Saladin, B., 2001. Further evidence on the validity of the theoretical models underlying the Baldrige criteria. Journal of Operations Management, 19(6), pp.617-652. 2001 168 Design of BEFs Objectives 5 and 6: To identify the most popular and the highest-ranked journals A total of 114 journals have published BE-relevant papers. The number of papers published in a journal is taken as the measure of its popularity among BE researchers. A list of the top five journals by the number of BE papers is shown in Table 2.5. A list of journals with an AJG rating 46 of three or higher is shown in Table 2.6. The journals with five or more published BE journal papers are highlighted in the table. Table 2.5: List of journals with the highest number of published BE papers Journal Number of Papers Average Citations per Year per BE Paper Total Quality Management and Business Excellence 89 2.5 The TQM Journal 38 2.1 International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management 37 2.8 Quality Progress 28 0.3 Measuring Business Excellence 20 1.9 Table 2.6: List of journals publishing BE research with top AJG rating Journal Year Launched AJG Rating h-index Papers Citations Average Citations per Year Journal of Operations Management 1981 4* 166 5 863 11.6 Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 1973 4* 148 1 37 3 Management Science 1969 4* 221 1 271 11 Human Resource Management 1961 4 81 1 38 1 International Journal of Operations and Production Management 1985 4 120 5 72 2.8 Production and Operations Management 1992 4 93 2 47 1.5 Tourism Management 1982 4 159 2 49 1 Decision Sciences 1970 3 97 1 254 13.00 International Journal of Production Research 1961 3 115 5 356 5 International Journal of Production Economics 1991 3 155 4 82 3.75 California Management Review 1976 3 118 1 68 3.00 Omega 1973 3 120 1 42 2.00 47 Production Planning and Control 1990 3 66 1 15 1.00 IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 1969 3 82 1 1 0.00 International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 2005 3 67 1 1 0 Technovation 1981 3 111 1 7 0 Objective 7: To identify the average citations per year for BE papers in BE journals Table 2.7 shows the journals with five or more published BE journal papers in the sequence of their average citations per year per BE paper. The list also provides the h-index value for each journal as one of the indicators of its impact. As shown in this table, the Journal of Operations Management and the International Journal of Production Research have a citations rate of 12 and 5.4 citations per year per BE paper respectively which is high compared to the other journals (overall average is 2.1 citations per year per BE paper). To put this in perspective, from amongst all the 114 journals, only 14 journals have a citation rate of two citations per year per BE paper or higher. Amongst the journals that have published five or more BE papers, only five journals have a citation rate of two citations per year per BE paper or higher. Table 2.7: List of journals publishing five or more BE papers in the sequence of their average citation per year per paper Journal Year Launched Average Citation per Year Per Paper AJG Rating h- index Papers Citations Journal of Operations Management 1981 12 4* 166 5 863 International Journal of Production Research 1961 5.4 3 115 5 356 48 International Journal of Operations and Production Management 1985 3.2 4 120 5 72 International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management 1984 2.8 2 75 37 1266 Total Quality Management and Business Excellence (2003-current) Formerly knows as Total Quality Management (1990-2002) 1990 2.5 2 69 89 2172 The TQM Journal (2008- current) Formerly known as TQM Magazine (1988-2007) 1988 1.9 1 59 38 825 International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences 2009 1.8 1 22 5 49 Measuring Business Excellence 1997 1.7 1 36 20 471 Quality Management Journal 2013 1.6 Unclass ified 8 7 61 International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance 1988 1.3 1 40 7 210 Benchmarking 1999 0.9 1 54 6 39 International Journal of Business Excellence 2009 0.8 Unclass ified 15 5 33 Quality Progress 1974 0.3 1 31 28 223 Objective 8: To examine the relationship between international journal rankings and citation rates for BE papers Table 2.8 shows the relationship between the AJG rating of a journal and the average citations per year per BE papers of that journal. Papers published in the AJG recognised journals were found to have an overall citation rate of two citations per year and papers published in 4* rating journals had the highest citation rate of 10.3 citations per year. On the other hand, papers published in the journals that were unclassified by AJG were calculated to have a citation rate of 1.4 citations per year. Overall, the average citation rate per year across all journals was 1.7. 49 Table 2.8: Comparison of AJG rating and average citations per year per BE paper AJG Rating Number of Journals Number of Papers in these Journals Average Number of Papers per Journal in the Rating Category Average Citations per Year per BE Paper in all Journals of the Rating Category 4* 3 7 2.3 10.3 Average citations per year per BE paper across all AJG rated journals = 2 4 4 10 2.5 1.9 3 9 16 1.8 3.6 2 22 159 7.2 2.4 1 27 139 5.1 1.2 Unclassified 49 84 1.55 1.4 Objective 9: To identify the researchers that have published the most BE papers Table 2.9 provides a list of the authors with five or more papers on BE along with their affiliations and keywords. Table 2.9: List of authors and their affiliations Author Number of Papers Department or Research Centre Institute Name Country Keywords Mann R. 15 Centre for Organisational Excellence Research Massey University New Zealand Benchmarking, business excellence, best practices, business improvement and quality management Grigg N. 8 Department of Operations and Engineering Innovation Massey University New Zealand Business process improvement, performance measurement, benchmarking, business excellence, 50 knowledge management, service quality Escrig A.B. 7 Department of Business Administration and Marketing Universitat Jaume UJI Spain Total quality management, EFQM excellence model, best practices, business excellence, EFQM recognition Evans J.R. 7 Department of Operations, Business Analytics, and Information Systems University of Cincinnati United States Baldrige Criteria, knowledge management, performance excellence, performance measurement, organisational sustainability, McAdam R. 6 Department of Management, Leadership & Marketing Ulster University Business School United Kingdom Business improvement, organisational excellence, business excellence, Baldrige model, European Foundation for Quality Management Calvo-Mora A. 6 Department of Administration, Commercialisatio n, Investigation and Marketing University of Seville, Sevilla Spain EFQM model, quality management, social responsibility, social impact, process methodology, operational results 51 Eskildsen J. 6 Department of Management Aarhus Universitet Denmark European Foundation for Quality Management, quality management Dahlgaard J.J. 5 Department of Management and Engineering (IEI) Linköpings Universitet Sweden Business excellence models, EFQM model, MBNQA model, total quality management, control systems, management activities, change management Eriksson H. 5 Department of Technology Management and Economics Chalmers University of Technology Sweden Quality awards, self- assessment, total quality management, organisational performance, ISO 9000, quality management, EFQM model, MBNQA criteria Jackson S. 5 School of Management and Labor Relations Rutgers University- New Brunswick United States European Foundation for Quality Management, self- assessment, national health service, health care, governance, leadership 52 To identify what areas of research the BE literature comprises of, a more in-depth content analysis (rather than an analysis using VOSviewer) of papers is required. For this purpose, we carried out a classification of the highest impact (79) BE papers (papers with the highest number of citations per year). It was envisaged that it is more beneficial to study the highest impact BE literature in terms of what research areas it focuses on. Furthermore, the new research in BE should aim towards adding to the highest impact BE literature. Table 2.10 gives a list of all the main and sub- research areas. A paper was classified under a research area if one-third of the paper was found to be focused on it. A paper was classified under a maximum of two research areas. Table 2.10: Research areas and sub-research areas identified in this research Main Research Area Sub-Research Area Design of BEFs Comparing the design of established BEFs used for national BEAs Design of established BEF related to a specific criterion or aspect (these are provided under the “BE Topic/Criteria focussed research”) Design of an established BEF used for a national BEA Proposing a new alternative BEF Developing an alternative BEF based on an existing BEF BE In Practice Reasons/ Motivations of Organisations to Use BE/ BEFs How do organisations use BE/ BEFs for pursuing BE How do organisations do self-assessment Impact of BE Impact of BE related to a specific criterion or aspect of BE (these are provided under the “BE Topic/Criteria focussed research”) Impact of BE/ BEFs on overall performance Literature Reviews on BE Literature review of studies on BE/ BEFs BE Topic/Criteria focussed research Balanced Scorecard Customer and market focus (understanding customers, building customer relationships, marketing) Education, training, development and learning Health and safety Knowledge management and information technology Leadership (vision, values, developing leaders, ethics, governance) Six Sigma Social and environmental responsibility (sustainability, surpassing regulatory requirements/engaging with the local community) Standards and certification (IS0 9000, IS0 14000 etc) 53 Table 2.11: Number of papers in the sub-research areas, their average citation rates, and the framework/s they study M a in R es ea r ch A re a S u b -R es ea rc h A re a N u m b er o f P a p er s A v er a g e C it a ti o n R a te E F Q M E x ce ll en ce M o d el B a ld ri g e E x ce ll en ce F ra m ew o rk M u lt ip le O th er N /A Design of BEFs Comparing the design of established BEFs used for national BEAs 3 4.2 3 Design of established BEF related to a specific criterion or aspect 15 6.8 5 8 2 Design of an established BEF used for a national BEA 19 8.1 10 7 2 Proposing a new alternative BEF 2 8.1 1 1 Developing an alternative BEF based on an existing BEF 3 9.5 3 BE In Practice Reasons/ Motivations of Organisations to Use BE/ BEFs 5 4.5 4 1 How do organisations 11 4.8 6 2 2 Australian BEF 54 use BE/ BEFs for persuing BE How do organisations do self- assessment 4 3.9 3 1 Impact of BE Impact of BE related to a specific criterion or aspect of BE 2 3.8 2 Impact of BE/ BEFs on overall performance 9 8 2 4 2 1 Literature Reviews on BE Literature review of studies on BE/ BEFs 10 5.2 4 1 4 1 Table 2.11 shows that the “Design of an established BEF used for a national BEA” (which studies the BEF composition (principles, criteria, items), their validity, empirical assessment, and inter- relationship of criteria) is the most popular sub-research area for researchers, with 24% of the BE papers focusing on it, and “Design of established BEF related to a specific criterion or aspect” is the second most popular with 19% of the BE papers focusing on it. Overall, “Designing BE” is the most popular research area for researchers. EFQM Excellence Model is the most popularly studied model with 49.4% of the BE papers studying it, followed by Baldrige Excellence Framework which is studied by 25.3% of the papers. Another 20.25% of the papers study multiple BEFs. Table 2.12 shows that ISO is the most popular BE topic/ criteria focused research area for BE papers with 6 papers studying it, followed by leadership studied by 3. 55 Table 2.12: Number of papers with BE topic/ criteria focused research in the two sub-research areas with specific BE topic/ criteria focus BE Topic/Criteria focussed research Design of established BEF related to a specific criterion or aspect Impact of BE related to a specific criterion or aspect of BE Balanced Scorecard 1 Customer and market focus (understanding customers, building customer relationships, marketing) 1 Education, training, development and learning 1 Health and safety 1 Knowledge management and information technology 1 1 Leadership (vision, values, developing leaders, ethics, governance) 2 1 Six Sigma 1 Social and environmental responsibility (sustainability, surpassing regulatory requirements/engaging with the local community) 1 Standards and certification (IS0 9000, IS0 14000 etc) 6 4. Discussion Sourcing relevant BE literature Because of the evolution of terminologies used in the literature, researchers should use caution when defining BE and sourcing literature on BE. The first researcher to use the word BE in the body of a journal paper was Henry (1990) before which, papers used the TQM terminology, and the first journal paper to use BE in its title “Measuring business excellence” was from Mills (1995). These changes in the use of terminology were also reflected in the names of the business excellence awards. The “Baldrige National Quality Award” was launched in 1988 (NIST, 2020) and the first 56 journal paper to use it in its title “The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award: A prescription for quality improvement and international competition” was from Liebesman (1991). The name “Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence” was officially introduced in 1997 (Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, 1997), and the research of Evans (1997) was the first to use this name in a journal paper. In 2010, NIST renamed its Baldrige Program as the “Baldrige Performance Excellence Program” (NIST, 2020), and the study of Jayamaha et al. (2011) was amongst the first to use this name in a journal paper. The “European Quality Award” was launched in 1991 (EFQM, 2020) and this name was first used in the research of Brockman (1993). The award name was first changed to “European Business Excellence Award” in 1998, and the research of Dahlgaard and Dahlgaard (1999) was the first to use this name in a journal paper. This was changed to the “EFQM Award” in 2000 (NIST, 2020), and the study of Nabitz et al. (2000) was amongst the first to use this name in a journal paper. It is worth pointing out that according to this research, only 16 papers were published by the end of 1994. The reasons for the low number of papers during this period was likely due to a) BEFs only came into existence with the publication of the MBNQA in 1987 (first awarded in 1988) (NIST, 2020) and the EFQM in 1992 (EFQM, 2020) b) the most popular journals for BE such as the TQM Journal (initially named the TQM Magazine) and Total Quality Management and Business Excellence Journal (initially named the Total Quality Management Journal) were in their early years of establishment, 1988 and 1992 respectively, and were only beginning to raise awareness of the opportunity to undertake research and publish in this field. For instance, the First World Congress for TQM which was a premier event for researchers and supported by Professor Kanji’s Total Quality Management and Business Excellence Journal did not begin until 1995 (Kanji et al., 1995), c) the papers’ titles did not have any of the 29 keywords that were searched 57 for, and d) the papers were screened out because they did not meet the criteria established in this research to be considered BE papers. The list of papers developed in this research, as provided in the online resource from (Ghafoor et al., 2020), offers support to BE researchers in finding relevant BE literature with complete information provided on citation rates (by papers and by journals) and journal ratings. Interestingly, while there is a positive trend in the number of BE papers and citations, the number of applicants in the awards has continued to decrease (Cook & Zhang, 2019). For example, there were 84 award applicants of the MBNQA in 2011, 56 in 2016, and 44 in 2019 (NIST, 2020a). Cook and Zhang (2019) gave some possible explanations for this decline, that it may be a) because of a lack of interest of organisations in the awards, b) because certifications such as ISO 9001 (broadly recognised as an endorsement of quality), Lean, and Six Sigma are attracting potential BE applicants away from the BEAs, c) state awards (especially in case of the MBNQA) are more attractive for organisations to apply for rather than the national award, and d) BEAs were short- lived fashion amongst business leaders who have now lost enthusiasm for it. However, without research to validate a decline and the reasons for it, these views are conjecture only; it could be argued that organisations using certifications such as the ISO 9001, Lean, and Six Sigma are quality-centric and would be more likely to undertake a BE journey. Furthermore, some countries have just started or are planning to relaunch their BE awards in recent years (2019-2021, such as Brunei, Colombia, Denmark, Ecuador, Egypt, Pakistan, and South Africa) (Ghafoor & Mann, 2020) which shows that interest in BE is rising in several countries. On the other hand, the lower barriers to publication of articles (Steen et al., 2013) and a fast increasing number of institutes and scholars have resulted in a fast increasing number of research papers in all the fields including BE (Bornmann & Mutz, 2015). 58 Another major issue in sourcing BE literature is to select the right keywords. Some BE papers do not use BE related keywords in their titles, because of which these papers would not show in a search result. Also, the Scopus database used for searching BE papers is found to have a limitation that can hinder a researcher’s ability to find relevant papers as documents were sometimes classified incorrectly. Out of 1240 papers classified as “journal papers”, 142 (11.5%) papers were not peer-reviewed journal articles, rather conference proceedings or news articles. The present research resolved this issue by manually checking the document type of each paper thus removing any non-peer-reviewed papers identified by Scopus. This inaccuracy in the meta-data of the documents may also cause a researcher to miss some of the relevant papers that are likely to not show in the search result as they may be classified as non-peer review papers. This suggests that to conduct an accurate systematic literature review, using a peer-reviewed database such as Scopus is insufficient, and BE researchers should undertake a more detailed examination of individual papers. Improving citation rate for researchers Through studying the methodologies and designs of high impact papers, researchers can learn how to improve their research and write papers that achieve high citation ratings (Bou-Llusar et al., 2009; Dalimunthe & Muda, 2016). The citation rate of a paper relates to the quality of the paper which is a multidimensional concept including the soundness of the research being undertaken, its originality, scientific value, and societal value (Aksnes et al., 2019). The research area selection of BE research is an important factor for researchers that can later affect the citation rate of their paper. After examining the research areas in BE research, it was found that “Design of an established BEF used for a national BEA” is the most popular research area and has the highest average citation rate of 8.1 among the research areas with more than five BE papers. 59 Papers published in the journals with the highest Academic Journal Guide (AJG ratings) are found, not surprisingly, to have the highest citation rates. Five out of 10 papers with the highest citation rates are published in 4* rating journals which are the few journals that are classified as examples of excellence by the AJG. The Journal of Operations Management (JOM), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), and Management Science Journal (MSJ) are identified as the highest impact journals in BE according to the AJG rating with 4* ratings. In addition to these, the Human Resource Management Journal (HRMJ), International Journal of Operations and Production Management (IJOPM), Production and Operations Management Journal (POMJ), and Tourism Management Journal (TMJ) are also high impact journals in BE according to AJG with a rating of 4. Papers published in the AJG recognised journals, are likely to get twice as many citations compared to papers published in unclassified journals (see Table 2.6). Papers published in the 4* rated journals are found to have 5 times more citations compared to the unclassified journals. This is because research published in top journals requires to be theory-based and/or methodologically rigorous or innovative. Business Excellence models are practitioner-based and (as previously argued in the present paper) lack a recognisable core theory per se. This means such research is generally based on a rigorous or innovative research method such as structural equation modelling (Flynn & Saladin, 2001). Researchers should use BE related keywords in their papers’ titles to increase their chance of being read and cited. This is a common practice among high impact papers. Out of 36 papers that have five or more citations per year on average, 27 have used the names of the two most popular frameworks (MBNQA or EFQM) in their titles and keywords. The remaining have also used words like “business excellence” or “excellence awards” in their titles. 60 The most popular journals for researchers publishing BE research The journals that have published the highest number of papers on BE are different from the highest impact journals. “Total Quality Management & Business Excellence” was launched in 1990 and is identified as the most popular journal for publishing BE papers in with 89 papers. “Total Quality Management Journal” was launched in 1988 and is the second most popular with 38 papers. “International Journal of Quality and Reliability Management” was launched in 1984 and is the third most popular with 37 papers. “Quality Progress” was launched in 1978 and is the fourth most popular with 28 papers. “Measuring Business Excellence” journal was launched in 1997 and is the fifth most popular with 20 papers. It may be argued that the year of the launch of these journals can cause variance in the number of papers published under these journals (the older the journal the more likely it is to have a higher number of papers published). However, there are more papers published under TQM & BE than IJQRM and QP despite the latter two being older journals. Hence, an older journal does not necessarily imply more papers. The discrepancy in the popular and high-impact journals as indicated by the data gives rise to a dilemma. This dilemma is for researchers as to whether they should publish papers in a BE or quality-related journal to support the BE profession or to publish in journals that are wider in scope but have a higher impact or citation rating such as JOM, IJPR, and IJOPM, thus prioritising their papers’ citations over supporting the BE profession. The importance of having field-specific journals is under question if researchers from all disciplines begin to target the same journals. The use of electronic libraries as the primary mechanism for searching for relevant research also calls into question the need for discipline led journals. 61 Research areas of the most notable and active BE researchers There is no specific area of research focused upon by the authors that have the highest number of papers on BE. In general, they have published on a range of BE topics. There are three notable areas of focus for the top authors identified in this research. Studying the two most popular BEFs; MBNQA Criteria (Mai et al., 2018; Mann & Voss, 2000) and the EFQM Excellence Model (Suárez et al., 2014; Dahlgaard‐Park, 2008; Saunders et al., 2008; McAdam & O’Neill, 1999) stands out as a popular area of research for the authors. The authors also focus on empirically testing the soundness of the BEFs; for example, how well the criteria of these frameworks relate with each other (Eriksson et al., 2016; Jayamaha et al., 2008; Jayamaha et al., 2009) and how well they can accurately measure the performance of an organisation and help in achieving organisational results (Raharjo et al., 2015; Evans, 2015; Jayamaha, 2011; Bou‐Llusar et al., 2005; Calvo-Mora et al., 2005). These authors have published on BE implementation and award experiences from around the world (Escrig-Tena et al., 2016; Escrig & de Menezes, 2015; Evans & Mai, 2014; Evans et al., 2012; McAdam, 1999; Xie et al., 1998). Research areas and sub-research areas of the highest impact BE papers A key objective for conducting this research was to assess what is and has been, defining the body of the highest impact BE literature. It is of value for future researchers, to identify what research areas the published BE papers cover. This not only uncovers the popular research areas in BE research but also which ones have been less explored in prior research. A review of the published BE literature reveals that “Design of BEFs” is the most popular research area among authors, followed by “BE in practice”. However, few (14%) studies cover the area of “Impact of BE” and within that, even fewer (2.5% of the 79 examined BE papers) on the sub-area of “Impact of BE related to a specific criterion or aspect of BE”. This suggests that for the future, studies related to 62 the impact of BE, particularly, with focus on specific BEF criteria and other BE related topics (for example, performance and best practice benchmarking), may be of a high impact. Furthermore, the highest impact BE literature is overwhelmingly dominated by the (95%) BE papers studying Baldrige Excellence Framework and the EFQM Excellence Models. Here is another area of future research to identify what other BEFs are in use with BECs around the world and to study their design, practice, and impact. 5. Conclusion and Limitations All the research objectives of this paper have been met. A list of all the (415) BE journal papers has been selected followed by an anal