Title: Malcolm Baldridge award as strategic leverage for educational and other service-related institutions

Authors: Alan D. Smith

Addresses: Department of Management and Marketing, Robert Morris University, Pittsburgh, PA 15219–3099, USA

Abstract: Since its inception in 1987, the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award (MBNQA) is given to establishments in various industries for their achievements through improving quality. At first glance, the award appears to favour manufacturing facilities, having received 40% of the awards over its history. Based on the origination and importance of quality management in manufacturing, this should come as no surprise. The focus of the paper is to evaluate if manufacturing has ultimately favoured compared to other industries and how the award has impacted some of the other industries included in them, namely small business, healthcare, and education. Taking industry size into account an industry comparison revealed that education is well represented and healthcare is underrepresented. Small business has decreased slightly in awards due to the addition of new categories in 1999. Overall, the facilities that have won the awards have been stories of success. Therefore, quality management can help improve all establishments regardless of industry.

Keywords: business quality; best practice; education quality; healthcare quality; Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award; MBNQA; manufacturing quality; operational effectiveness; total quality management; TQM; strategy; small business; quality improvement.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMIE.2008.016231

International Journal of Management in Education, 2008 Vol.2 No.1, pp.60 - 76

Published online: 10 Dec 2007 *

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