Search results

This paper aims to address the nature of sustainable enterprise excellence, what it is, its enablers and specific manifestations.

A sweeping model of sustainable enterprise excellence, resilience and robustness is introduced, along with its enablers. Among enablers, supply-chain proficiency, vertical trust, distributed leadership and neuropsychological measurement are cited. A method of strategy modeling is introduced that, if rigorously pursued, will improve enterprise strategy and, hence, also opportunity for better subsequent performance and impacts. Similarly, an approach for strategic alignment in a large, multi-level enterprise is presented.

There are many paths toward sustainable enterprise excellence. Regardless of the path, this anticipates enterprise pursuit of socially equitable, environmentally responsible and economically sound performance and impacts.

The present is the Anthropocene age, an era fraught with challenges largely of people's own making and related to climate change and various sorts of social strain. Organizations have the wherewithal to attack these challenges. Given the orientation of sustainable enterprise excellence, methods and models that advance sustainable enterprise excellence have the potential to combat these challenges.

Sustainable enterprise excellence provides models and methods for confronting significant challenges that societies and organizations alike are faced with. Various models and paths to sustainable enterprise excellence are suggested in this paper.

When appropriately implemented, excellence models such as the Shingo operational excellence model (SOEM), Baldrige performance excellence model and EFQM business excellence model aid enterprise quests for sustained superior results across varied dimensions. Evidence supporting this statement abounds in the literature and in practice. The models, however, tend to be driven by experience, rather than grounded in theory. The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretical underpinnings for such models, with the SOEM used for illustrative purposes.

Management theory, systems theory and excellence modeling are integrated to yield a complex management systems based operational excellence model. Correspondence of this model with the SOEM is explored. Key elements considered include contextual factors external to the enterprise, diverse stakeholders, mediating forces, enterprise culture and representative enterprise processes.

Understanding the theoretical underpinnings of excellence models—their elements and the interactions and synergies of these elements—enables more sure adaptation of such models to specific enterprise contexts, and more sure course corrections whenever corrections are needed.

Many excellence models exist, their usefulness largely validated by anecdotal or empirical evidence. Such validation is important, but falls short of theoretically grounding these models. The approach taken herein serves to unify theory, empirical evidence and anecdotes, thus placing excellence models on more solid ground.

The purpose of this paper is to broadly explore the contributions of supply chain proficiency in relation to sustainable enterprise excellence, resilience and robustness (SEER2).

A pre-existing SEER2 model, referred to as the Springboard to SEER2, is put under the microscope to determine specific interactions of supply chain proficiency with six key areas of the Springboard: triple top-line strategy and governance; strategy execution via policies, processes and partnerships; financial and marketplace performance and impact; sustainability performance and impact; human ecology and capital performance and impact; and social-ecological and general innovation and continuous improvement performance and impact.

Supply chain proficiency is integral to attainment of SEER2. As such, supply chain proficiency must be thoughtfully and strategically approached, with success critical to enterprise contribution to mitigation or solution of wicked global challenges ranging from climate change, to food insecurity, to societal conflict.

This paper reveals in depth the centrality of supply chain proficiency to SEER2, suggesting that such models as those behind America's Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award and the European Quality Award might be enhanced by more deeply considering supply chain contributions to business and performance excellence. Supply chains are at present peripheral to such models, thereby providing essentially isolated views of enterprises in an age where supply chain collaboration is increasingly the norm.

The Czech Republic has a long history of product excellence recognizable in such diverse areas as beer, weapons and shoe manufacture. Moreover, many of the ideas regarded as central to contemporary expression of TQM such as empowerment and primacy of the organization’s human resource are to be found in the 1920s and 1930s speeches and essays of Czech industrialist and organizational behaviorist Tomas Bata. Nevertheless, the Czech Republic faces distinct challenges brought about by the Velvet Revolution ‐ challenges common to many Central and Eastern European nations. Challenges, practices, trends and the future promise of quality in the Czech Republic are discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to improve the ability of enterprises to routinely realize peak performance and produce positive social and environmental impact.

An acknowledged operational excellence model – the one behind the globally recognized Shingo Prize for Operational Excellence – is examined in relation to positive reciprocal behavior and the value of creating and reinforcing processes that “pile good upon good” in form of virtuous improvement cycles.

Embedding virtuous reciprocity cycles in enterprise culture and routines can help to routinize peak performance.

Only the Shingo Operational Excellence Model is examined so that other well-known alternatives such as the Malcolm Baldrige Performance Excellence Model and EFQM Excellence Model are not examined. That said, the general structure and content of most excellence models is sufficiently similar that the approach taken herein would likely yield analogous conclusions.

Inherent in “practices” is that enterprises seek to routinize successful approaches to performance and impact, usually via contextualized implementation of excellence models or “programs” such as lean enterprise.

Offered is one means of creating more positive enterprise cultures. Enterprises with more positive cultures have been shown to also be more productive and to contribute more positively to the fabric of society so that the “piling of good upon good” can extend beyond the borders of the enterprise.

The contribution herein is one of demonstrating why and how virtuous cycles can be implemented to more routinely yield improved or peak performance.

Six sigma programs are raging through corporations worldwide, with some corporations citing savings in the $US billions resulting from six sigma implementation. Six sigma has both proponents and detractors with some arguing that nothing new is involved and others identifying it as revolutionary. The view espoused herein argues for six sigma as a methodology within the larger framework of total quality management – a blend of old and new in the sense that the tools of six sigma are often familiar ones, but are applied with an eye that is more strategically focused than historic use of those tools ordinarily indicates.

Presents the “BEST” model for sustainability built on the pillars of biophysical/environmental, economic, societal and technological principles. Attempts to relate this model to the principles and criteria of representative business excellence models with the goal of achieving business excellence with a social and environmental conscience. Looks at some core considerations of BEST sustainability as well as some commonly agreed upon business excellence principles. Concludes by discussing areas where sustainable development and business excellence may converge.

BEST business excellence addresses the issue of excellence and sustainability from four perspectives: bio/physical, economic, social, and technological. The concept of BEST business excellence seeks to address the balance of objectives that many academics and practitioners alike believe are necessary, perhaps not sufficient, to secure the long‐term survival, prosperity, and thriving of humankind and its institutions. Somewhat allied with triple bottom line, this concept is in its infancy and little work has been completed in the formation of the concept intuitively or formally. This paper begins a discourse to develop an optimization model for the concept of BEST business excellence. The models presented herein are graphical and descriptive and offer a basis for further development. These models represent the transformation from maximizing economic outcomes as the organizational objective constrained by B‐sustainability (bio/physical) largely through regulation, S‐sustainability (social) largely through a sense of obligation or by consumer action, and T‐sustainability (technology) largely through the limitations of current technology available. The new model offers the different perspective of the objective function containing variables representing B‐, E‐, and S‐sustainability, wherein those objectives are jointly optimised using technology (T‐sustainability) where cost becomes the constraint. The resultant descriptive model shows how technology forms the centerpiece of optimization and provides direction for technological development resulting in simultaneous optimization of bio/physical, economic, and social objectives.

Outlines the origin, vision, guiding principles and strategic intents of the Multinational Alliance for the Advancement of Organizational Excellence (MAAOE). Describes how MAAOE brings together leaders from many disciplines who are bonded together by a shared desire to investigate, create, disseminate and apply the multidisciplinary and multicultural knowledge necessary to assist organizations in their quest for excellence.