Thursday
Friday
Organizational Excellence: from the Words to the Concept from the Concept to Practice.
Excellence has become an objective embraced by numerous organizations. There is not, however, general consensus on the concept of organizational excellence. Can we continue to use this term without agreeing on its sense? Is the idea of excellence realistic? What about the elitist connotation that the concept has in some countries? Further reflection is necessary to develop an accepted definition that may reduce confusion in both theory and practice.
From a theoretical point of view, is organizational excellence based on a specific corpus? If that is the case, its components and frontiers should be made clearer. Besides, it could be worth studying how its underlying theoretical framework articulates with both the traditional fields of management and the different functions of a firm. There is perhaps something to be learned from the Total Quality Management approach: What are the lessons from the latter that could enlighten the research on organizational excellence? What are the links between those two approaches? Are incremental or radical approaches more efficient? What are the relationships between Total Quality, innovation and excellence?
In this search for understanding of organizational excellence, up to what point can it assure competitive advantage and is it possible to sustain a competitive advantage using organizational excellence approaches? Is the idea of sustainable excellence applicable / operational? Do specific organizational structures contribute better to drive and perpetuate an excellence project? Are the variables necessary to implement organization excellence the same than those necessary to sustain it? What particular processes and practices may foster its success? What are the main obstacles and barriers that we may encounter in the process of implementing organizational excellence?
Value creation for shareholders as well as for stakeholders is central to the concept. We need to define evaluation criteria to assess the satisfying level of excellence relative to competitors or to excellence models. To what extent is an excellent firm high performance? Can a firm be excellent across all domains? Indeed, citizen-consumers have new demands - on the one hand in terms of the expected quality-price ratio, and on the other hand in terms of social results pertaining to the environment, public health and human respect. Can the firm find in those new preoccupations some kind of legitimacy, and therefore innovative ways to valorise its organizational excellence? What is the actual weight of those aspects in firms' present excellence policies? How can organizations control their society results? Are the considerations concerning sustainable development compatible with internal excellence?
Another topic touches diversity of organizations. For instance, public and private sector organizations may have differing objectives in terms of exc