EFQM Model and Quality Management: Leadership and Innovation

As the healthcare sector is under growing pressure to enhance patient outcomes and reduce costs, quality management systems are becoming increasingly essential to ensure high-quality care and efficient operations. The EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) model serves as a framework for assessing an organization's quality management system. This paper provides an overview of the implementation of EFQM in the healthcare sector based on the literature analysis. Findings revealed that the EFQM model is unsuitable for the hospital sector and needs to be customized before it can be used for practical application. In addition, the EFQM model can also be integrated into local, national, or international country-specific models. However, regarding the model's application sector, the EFQM model can be applied to any specialty (emergencies, medical services, primary care services, intensive care services, and so on). To the best of our knowledge, the proposed study is the first that sheds light on the importance of the integration and customization of the EFQM model when it is used in the healthcare sector by various case studies in the literature.

To evaluate whether accredited health organizations perform better management practices than non-accredited ones. The study was developed in two stages: a literature review, and a study of multiple cases in 12 healthcare organizations in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. It surveyed articles comparing hospital accreditation with the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) model of excellence in management. According to the pertinent literature, the accreditation model and the EFQM model are convergent and supplementary in some aspects. With 99% confidence, one can say that there is evidence that accredited organizations scored better in the evaluation based on the EFQM model in comparison to non-accredited organizations. This result was also confirmed in the comparison of results between the categories Facilitators and Results in the EFQM model. There is convergence between the accreditation model and the EFQM excellence model, suggesting that accreditation helps the healthcare sector to implement the best management practices already used by other business sectors. Avaliar se as organizações de saúde acreditadas possuem melhores práticas de gestão do que as não acreditadas. A pesquisa foi dividida em duas etapas: revisão da literatura e estudo de casos múltiplos com 12 organizações de saúde, localizadas no estado de São Paulo ‒ Brasil. Foram pesquisados artigos que comparavam a acreditação hospitalar com o modelo de excelência em gestão da EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management), sendo que a literatura pertinente considera que o modelo de acreditação e o modelo da EFQM são convergentes e, ao mesmo tempo, complementares em determinados aspectos. Com 99% de confiança, pode-se afirmar que há evidência de que as organizações com acreditação obtiveram uma pontuação maior na avaliação baseada no modelo EFQM comparativamente às organizações não acreditadas. Este resultado também se confirmou na comparação dos resultados das categorias Facilitadores e Resultados do modelo EFQM. Há uma convergência entre o modelo de acreditação e o modelo de excelência da EFQM, sugerindo que a acreditação contribui para o setor de saúde implementar as melhores práticas de gestão já difundidas em outros setores de negócio.

In a growingly competitive business environment, numerous organizations adopt the total quality management (TQM) approach, to struggle for business excellence. To monitor the progress towards business excellence, thousands of organizations across the world use self-assessment on a regular basis. There are a few popular business excellence models, that provide standard criteria against which an organization can measure its performances. European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is the most popular ones. The EFQM Excellence Model was introduced at the beginning of 1992, as the framework for assessing organizations for the European Quality Award. It is now the most widely used organizational framework in Europe and across the world and it has become the basis for the majority of international, national and regional Quality Awards. It is a practical tool that can be used as a guide to identify areas for Improvement. However, the current EFQM model has some drawbacks and problems which are not able to identify the priorities in Area for Improvement (AFI). For organizations with limitations of time, budget and resources and that cannot implement all the AFIs, some standards or indexes and limitations should be defined for prioritizing and choosing the AFIs. Using fuzzy multi criteria decision making model, the AFIs’ can be identified. Therefore, this work will develop a more comprehensive method of evaluating, assessing and determining the AFIs’ in the EFQM model. The results showed that, the new comprehensive developed model is more valid and acceptable and the experts verified the model for selecting of AFIs’ in EFQM in practice. The developed model was used in a case study and extracted results from it and were analyzed from different points of view. Key words: European quality award, EFQM, business excellence model, area for improvement, fuzzy logic, fuzzy multi criteria decision making.

The EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) model offers a structure to describe and characterize one’s organization and allows the user to adapt the model to a great extent to the local working environment. Using five organization oriented enablers and four result oriented focused criteria, any organization, or substantial part of it, can be characterized. This accounts certainly for a medical laboratory in a hospital setting. The model tries to encourage practical usefulness and self-guidance, continuous improvement in a natural, stepwise way, and change management focused on the positive things within the organization. Application leads to consciousness of the quality of the entire operation, diagnoses, and advises for quality improvement and managerial control, i.e., through indicators. As the work of Islin and Thystrup illustrated, the EFQM model can be very elegantly and effectively applied to medical laboratories [1]. This paper is a compilation of nine lectures given in sequence to elaborate on each of the nine EFQM criteria. The following compilation explores the possibilities of using in a dedicated laboratory service this general quality management model by each of the criteria.

This work aims to propose alternatives to the EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) Model from the perspectives of sustainability, efficiency, and competitiveness, with an application to the railway sector in Spain. Concerning improvement factors, a retroactive analysis is based on a second-degree confirmatory factorial analysis, suggesting a new grouping of factors. With respect to the transformation process, a systemic proposal of seven cross-cutting elements (Integral Framework for Transformation into Outstanding Organizations) is presented, providing a sequence of reflection and action initiatives to successfully address the current environmental sustainability, efficiency, and competitiveness challenges in the railway sector through a case study, ADIF (Administrador de Infraestructuras Ferroviarias). The proposal for this Integrated Framework for The Transformation of Organizations is carried out to consolidate the EFQM Model, not only as a management evaluation tool, but also as a quality of management and sustainability instrument, increasing its role as a driving mechanism for actions that generate an effective improvement and transformation in an organization dedicated to mobility. The confirmation of all the hypotheses related to the relationship between Leadership and Strategy, on the one hand explanations., and People, Alliances and Resources, and Processes on the other, along with the four Criteria of Results (People, Clients, Society, and Key Results), allows for the proposal of an EFQM Model that evolves around three major constructs: Guidance, Action, and Feedback. The implications of this work focus on three areas: (1) theoretical, as it is the first analysis of this magnitude to be performed in literature; (2) research, as it opens new hypotheses for contrasting with other organizations in the sector; and (3) management, as it proposes a sustainable organizational and business model.

ABSTRACTThe European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model provides guidance and support for business organisations to improve their quality management. This goal is attained by examining the relations among the several criteria that are defined and included in the model – the Enablers and the Results – albeit without going deeply into their empirical correlations. Our research focuses on the sport industry and, more particularly, on golf-related services and facilities. We analyse their management and performance. The goal is to conduct an empirical study of golf courses making up the supply in a Spanish inland region. On the basis of data and assessments contributed by the participating sample – and by resorting to multivariate statistical analysis – we pinpoint the influence of all Enablers identified by the EFQM Model, as well as their impact on the Results criteria. Correlations designed and empirically quantified make it possible for us to confirm the theoretical interrelations that the EFQM Model proposes between the defined criteria. The structural model thus obtained allows us to design a map that plots the relationships across the several criteria defined by the EFQM Model, one which portrays present-day approaches to management put into practice by the golf courses under scrutiny.

One way to meet the challenges in creating a high performance organization in health care is the approach of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). The Foundation is in the tradition of the American Malcolm Baldrige Award and was initiated by the European Commission and 14 European multi-national organizations in 1988. The essence of the approach is the EFQM Model, which can be used as a self-assessment instrument on all levels of a health care organization and as an auditing instrument for the Quality Award. In 1999 the EFQM Model was revised but its principles remained the same. In The Netherlands many health care organizations apply the EFQM Model. In addition to improvement projects, peer review of professional practices, accreditation and certification, the EFQM Approach is used mainly as a framework for quality management and as a conceptualization for organizational excellence. The Dutch National Institute for Quality, the Instituut Nederlandse Kwaliteit, delivers training and supports self-assessment and runs the Dutch quality award programme. Two specific guidelines for health care organizations, 'Positioning and Improving' and 'Self-Assessment', have been developed and are used frequently. To illustrate the EFQM approach in The Netherlands, the improvement project of the Jellinek Centre is described. The Jellinek Centre conducted internal and external assessments and received in 1996, as the first health care organization, the Dutch Quality Prize.

Students could be considered the real customers of higher education institutes (HEIs). This idea is especially correct in private HEIs, because students usually pay for education as a service in such institutes. The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is a world-class quality management model that represents total quality management (TQM) theory, and it has been widely applied by HEIs. The EFQM model indicates that customers' satisfaction is one of the main organisational results directly achieved through five quality management enablers. In contrast to this idea, there is much evidence showing that customers' satisfaction can be achieved only if the attempts of the organisation in quality management lead to enabling the institute to provide high service quality for their customers; then, competitive and high-quality services could produce customers' satisfaction. Despite the significant role of service quality between quality management enablers and customers' satisfaction, this concept is neglected in quality management models, e.g. the EFQM model. The current study tries to fill this gap through explaining this mediating role of service quality in HEIs. A model, including 11 hypotheses, is presented to illustrate the influences of five EFQM enablers on service quality in HEIs that finally ends in achieving good students' satisfaction. Data were collected from 146 Iranian private HEIs through a structured questionnaire; results approved all hypotheses. Findings showed that service quality should be included as a mediating element in the quality management framework between quality enablers and students' satisfaction. This could provide sufficient knowledge and insight for HEIs to find out how they could increase the level of service quality through quality enablers and how they could satisfy their students through the appropriate quality of services.

This study focuses on the important concepts of quality management, internal customer satisfaction, and business performance within the neglected purchasing unit of manufacturing firms on the basis of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model, thus, filling a void in the existing literature. In doing so, this study tests the viability of the EFQM model in a single functional unit. Three hypothesis were generated based on the EFQM model to identify the specific relationships between purchasing’s quality management practices (EFQM enabler), internal customer satisfaction, and business performance (EFQM results). The hypotheses were tested through structural equation modeling based on a sample of 306 purchasing agents within manufacturing. The results indicated that the EFQM seem to be a viable model that represents what impacts implementing QMP enablers will have on the resultants, ICS and OP. Additionally, the results identified that the extent of adoption of quality management purchasing has a direct positive impact on improving internal customer satisfaction and an indirect positive impact on business performance mediated by internal customer satisfaction, as predicted by the EFQM model. This study highlights the positive impact of adoption of EFQM in the purchasing area, thus, lends support to purchasing departments trying to justify the implementation of quality management practices to their administrations. Additionally, it gives upper management, looking for ways to improve the company’s bottom line, the specifics to do this through the implementation of quality management practices in purchasing. Management and purchasing departments are given a blueprint for improving their performance.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop an assessment guide based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model criteria. Courts have been under pressure to become more accountable and responsive organisations. In this context, self-assessment models that drive attention to the way resources are being used and to the results that are being achieved, incorporating the views of different stakeholders, are of particular interest. Design/methodology/approach – A case study approach was used. The meaning of the quality principles that underline the EFQM model was discussed with the court administrator, judges, prosecutors and justice officers. Those perspectives were taken into account when translating the criteria and criterion parts of the EFQM model. The assessment guide was validated by an experts’ panel. Findings – The EFQM model captures the essential features of a court even if the courts terminology and governance models challenge the translation of some criteria. The resulting guide includes a description of the various criteria and criterion parts and the identification of key focus areas, while giving some illustrative examples of initiatives and indicators that could be looked at under each model dimension. Practical implications – The assessment guide can be used to undertake self-assessment exercises in different courts. Originality/value – There is a lack of studies on the measurement of courts’ performance apart from the publication of simple lists of process indicators. The assessment guide developed in this study is perhaps one of the most comprehensive resources for assessing the quality of a court.

Education sector, and particularly, Higher Education Institutions (HEI), is nowadays an increasingly competitive sector, where the HEI’s success, relies on stakeholder’s recognition, along with their capacity to attract funding, to achieve sustainability. To attends such demands, HEI tends to incorporate into their strategy, Internal Quality Assurance Systems (IQAS). Additionally, and according to some works, existed on literature, HEI should follows a logic of continuous improvement, through the services provided to their stakeholders, where EFQM (European Foundation for Quality Management) model, arises as an alternative solution to be considered. However, and although the success achieved with this model on private sector, there are no certainties about the results of their implementation in HEI, since some of the adopted models have a set of techniques based on theories, sometimes incompatible within HEI nature. Therefore, and by using the case study methodology, it is intended to analyze the feasibility of an IQAS implementation, based on the EFQM model, in an Engineering School in Portugal. For this purpose, they are identified some advantages and difficulties found within its implementation, as well as ways to overcome them, contributing therefore with some answers for a better EFQM implementation into a HEI in general.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine how sub-criteria of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model is structurally connected and influence each other. This paper also tries to find the underpinning logics in the EFQM model.Design/methodology/approachThe study uses the empirical methodology based on assessment scores of 58 different organizations to gauge the underlying structure, develop the construct and establish interlinkages among the various sub-criteria in the EFQM model. Statistical analysis is used to find the impact on results and cross influencing of criteria at the sub-criteria level. The factorial analysis is carried out using the Doe technique to create factorial plots for result categories (customer results, people results, society results and business results). The approach is to unravel (1) the role played by each sub-criterion of the model, (2) the effects of sub-criteria on the results of the EFQM model and (3) the influence of sub-criteria on the managerial aspects of the model in an organizational context.FindingsThe EFQM sub-criteria are categorised as promoters, proponents, defenders or detractors based on their impact on the results and cross-influence on each other. The study unfolded seven sub-criteria positively impacting the results and one sub-criterion negatively impacting the results if not handled properly. Out of 32 sub-criteria, nine sub-criteria are influencing more than six other sub-criteria.Originality/valueThe paper investigates, for the first time: (1) the role played by each sub-criteria of the model; (2) the relationships that are produced between these sub-criteria on the EFQM results and (3) identify how such sub-criteria would influence the managerial aspects of the model in an organizational context. This research develops underlying logics in the EFQM model using Doe factorial methods for overcoming the multi-collinearity.

Introduction: Currently, and in a competitive context, Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) increasingly depend on the quality of their services, not only to satisfy their different stakeholders, but also to attract funding. In this way, HEIs tend to incorporate Internal Quality Management Systems (IQMS) into their strategy with a view to the continuous improvement of their performance. This work intends to analyze the applicability of an HEI, based on the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model, through its implementation in a public Portuguese HEI. Objectives: Contribute to a critical analysis of the applicability of an IQMS in the organizational performance of an HEI, based on the EFQM model, and implemented in a published HEI. Methods: A number of advantages and difficulties were obtained. For the difficulties obtained, it was proposed a set of suggestions for its overcoming. Results: A number of advantages and difficulties were obtained. For the difficulties obtained, it was proposed a set of suggestions for its overcoming. Conclusions: The application of the SIGQ in the HEI under study, proved to be beneficial, due to a set of perceived advantages, among them, the increase of the organizational efficiency. For each one of the disadvantages identified in the study, a set of solutions was proposed for its mitigation, thus allowing to reinforce the potential of applying the EFQM model in an HEI.

Quality management frameworks (QMFs) are becoming increasingly crucial in the public administration sector due to the demands and expectations of the stakeholders. Used properly, they provide a structured approach to assessing the current service quality level and the organisational performance and help to identify where improvements can be made. The article analyses and discusses the Polish local government offices experience and involvement in the QMFs implementation, like the ISO 9001 standard, Common Assessment Framework and European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) models. The aim of the article, on the basis of the case-study method, is to present the efforts of QMFs implementation in two selected local governments in Poland – The City Office in Dzierżoniów, and The City Office in Trzebnica, and to confirm that QMFs implementation positively affects overall service quality and the key performance indicators, as well as to confirm that the EFQM model with its general and universal structure can be successfully used by public institutions, such as local government offices.

Background The EFQM Model, launched by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), is widely adopted by transforming organizations. Conducting research with an academic perspective on these models is crucial to comprehend their potential fully. While Contingency Theory has not yet gained widespread recognition for this purpose, it can play a fundamental role in shaping organizations’ transformational domains. Objectives To evaluate the feasibility of the EFQM Model in transformation by integrating theoretical concepts with practical applications across the Environment, Size, Technology, and Strategy domains while minimizing ESG risks. Methods/Approach Quantitative analysis, employing Linear Programming (LP), is utilized to explore the interaction between 25 sub-criteria derived from EFQM and contingency theory, with data from 50 participants being analysed using operational research-based LP optimization and sensitivity analysis. Results The EFQM Model showcases feasibility in managing ESG risks and driving transformations with above-average success rates in the case study. Notably, the “Size” transformation domain plays a vital role in strategic transformations, alongside other sub-criteria, as indicated by various sensitivity analyses. Conclusions The EFQM criteria’ methodological approach closely aligns with the transformation perspective of contingency theory, holding potential to enhance future business system research.