Business excellence models as sources of benchmarking and improvement

There has always been a significant debate about management models and systems in the literature. This thesis focuses on Business Excellence (BE) models, and their impact on the process maturity and performance. Through a case-study and a survey in UK firms, this study shows that utilising and commitment to BE models is significantly related to process maturity and financial performance. Not only BE-active firms were in a better situation than non-BE-active firms, but also within the BE-active companies, those who showed a higher level of commitment, were higher in their process maturity and financial performance. This is a thesis by publication presenting several contributions to the existing knowledge. The literature review has resulted in a conceptual paper including the first comprehensive scientific excellence model. Following the literature review, a case-study is presented in the second paper proposing a new process orientation methodology, namely the ‘Business Process Rearrangement and Renaming (BPR2)’ boosted by BE. The power of names which has been so far neglected in management literature, has been utilised in BPR2. Instead of destroying the organisational structure and rebuilding it, BPR2 suggests giving each of the existing departments ‘a new identity and responsibility’ to provide specific products/services for the internal/external customers. A survey has been conducted on the impacts of commitment to BE which resulted in proposition of the new ‘Organized Commitment Model’ presented in the third paper. This model provides a platform for top managers who want to establish commitment on highly important issues such as organisational values, strategies, customer relationship, and so on. The Model can be also used by academics who want to measure the impact of commitment to an issue such as commitment to strategies on another variable such as performance. ‘Aiming for Excellence’ is the central focus in the whole thesis. Although people present different definitions about excellence, overall understanding of people about this concept is very similar. Hence, ‘Aiming for Excellence’ can provide a shared vision that brings people together in difficult circumstances.