The practice of Excellence Models in multi–national companies(?)
World map with the sizes of land area relative to the country's GDP wealth - from Worldmapper
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Apparently, I put a question mark there in the title because I am not really sure myself. And I just don't seem to be able to find the answer to that. This question came up to me as I was pondering about in the EFQM manual and how it can be applicable in my home country (Thailand) a few days ago. To my knowledge and what we have concluded in one of our PPE seminars back a few weeks ago, I gathered that probably the most influential factor in the selection of an excellence model to use as a guideline is a geographical one.That seemed logical to me at the time but what about those multi-national companies that have their branches operating pretty much in every corner of the globe? Is it possible that they practise different models accordingly to their geographical location? If so, then how would they have a shared vision of the future - because I believe that even though every excellence model are very similar at the core of their principles, "similar" means that there are still differences and these difference (though it can be ridiculously small) will result in a different vision. To some companies this may not be a problem but big companies just cannot stand to risk anything just because it is regarded as insignificant due to the multitude of money associated with the operations of these companies. Now, to hypothesise from the other side of the possibilities, it may be that these companies stick to just "one" model and use it regardless of where the branch is located. While this may solve the above mentioned problem, another one arises. How would the company comply with the model that the particular country - where the company's branch is located in - is using? I have a feeling that there is probably a simple answer to it but I just cannot come up with any - gotta blame the gloomy Sunday morning. |
02 Dec 2007 09:59
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Tags: Efqm Global Policy&Strategy Results Society
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The only country which seems to be “normally sized” is New Zealand.
03 Dec 2007, 09:54
Paul Roberts
I think that one of the important aspects in your thoughts about which excellence model should a multi-national choose is in your last paragraph in which you consider compliance. Excellence models have not been created for compliance. Rather, they are models that can be used by organizations to help them to improve their performance. Hence, if a Thai company for example, had a strong export market in the U.S.A., it may choose to use the Baldrige model so that its customers could better relate the Thai company’s approach to excellence than if it chose the European or Deming’s models.
By the same token, a multi-national company is likely to choose the model with which it is most familiar and roll out its use across the world. I would argue that it is more important to use the same model across the whole organization than which model is chosen because use of a single model would ease internal benchmarking.
My last comment is that I do not see the connection between the vision and the choice of model that a company uses to guide its approach to excellence. These models are non-prescriptive guides for organizations that wish to significantly improve and they provide a mechanism for recognition of that journey. I would argue that the vision comes before choice of model, or if you have chosen your model, it would not impact on the vision that was subsequently created.
05 Dec 2007, 08:12
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