Weighting the dimensions in models of excellence – a critical review from a business perspective

Purpose Despite the widespread use of excellence models as a self-assessment tool in the past two decades, little is known about the underlying logic behind the way that promoting organizations give weight to their criteria, and whether these scores align with business reality. This paper aims to analyze whether these scores coincide with the vision of managers and the real situation of business today. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses three different methods and two kinds of data to review the evolution of scores on criteria in excellence models since their creation and empirically analyses and compares the results with the vision of the managers. Findings The results show that the estimated weight of criteria in the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model (both directly perceived by managers and obtained with the statistical analysis) do not coincide with the value that the promoting organization has given to them, in its current version or in the previous versions. Research limitations/implications This paper is focused exclusively on industrial companies so one discussion point that can serve as a basis for future research is to study whether there is any difference in the distribution of points between industrial organizations and services, or between private and public organizations. Practical implications The results show that, depending of the methodology used to evaluate the weight of each element of the excellence model, these weights could be different and are different from those proposed by EFQM. Therefore, if managers want to use the EFQM model of excellence for self-evaluation purposes, they should define their own weights for each element, in accordance with their own company characteristics. Leadership, strategy, people, partnership & resources and processes could have more or less importance in promoting the success of a business, according to the specific situation of each company. Originality/value This study has been made using three different methods and two kinds of data.