Introduction
The European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) is a framework designed to select organizations for the European Quality Award. Since its establishment in 1992, it has obtained a global recognition for assessing organization management. This model is designed to determine the position of an organization in its path to success and subsequent solutions to fill the gaps to realize success. The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) is a management framework that recognizes organizations that demonstrate quality and outstanding performance. The award is given annually by the US government to organizations across all sectors of the economy in both private and public entities. It is controlled by the Baldridge Performance Excellence Program, which is supervised by the department of commerce. Additionally, the award is based on six categories of processing, service, micro business, teaching, Medicare and non-profit. The award aims at promoting excellence performance and sharing vital business strategies that improve quality.
The Deming Prize is a Japanese management framework that recognizes outstanding organizations in quality improvement. It was established by Edwards Deming to focus on Japanese companies but has in the course of time changed to a global award. It is controlled by the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers and awards both organizations and individuals for outstanding contributions.
The underlying principles
The three Management models were established to award organizations that perform well in contributing to the growth of the economy through performance excellence. The EFQM uses a nine criteria base to assess organization management. The EFQM criteria are divided into causes and results that are further based on individual elements. The cause’s category explains what the organization undertakes while the results category outlines the achievements. The areas covered under the enablers’ category are executive, guidelines, people, enterprise & resource and business activities. Results category deals with: consumers, individuals, input results and society.
The MBNQA is determined by the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence to identify winners and strategies that will improve other organizations. The determination is based on a seven criteria approach of leadership, strategic planning, consumers and management. Other areas in the criteria are human resource management, manufacturing, and performance. The Deming Award recognizes winners in two categories as organizational or individual. The assessment criteria are determined by an organization that displays excellent performance in quality improvement of products and customer management. Individuals are awarded based on the innovative ideas.
The similarities and differences
The three models use different ideas according to their countries of origin. For example, EFQM is based on European ideas, MBNQA uses American ideas while Deming is Japanese. However, all three models were developed under different conditions. All three models are concerned with the quality of organizational performance. On leadership, the three models put more emphasis on stakeholders as an important part of an organization’s success. The major difference between the three models is that MBNQA and EFQM include social responsibility as an important criterion while Deming does not. Also, MBQA and EFQM have a standard criterion for assessing management while Deming has a different approach. The other similarity is that all three models advocate for constant improvement as a critical tool to achieve performance excellence. They all aim at increasing competition to improve the quality of products and services. Finally, all models are based on the principles outlined in the technical quality management.
