Quality management in Europe: do national culture and company size matter?

This paper describes the development of a new framework, based on the existing excellence models, but taking into consideration the national characteristics of the company, and the size of workforce. It highlights the main points of the new model and argues that the attitude "one size fits all" does not reflect the current entrepreneurial reality.
In the newly developed model, the national characteristics of the candidate companies are taken into consideration. Furthermore, most of the existing awards, such as the European Excellence Award, have developed from large businesses for large businesses, ignoring the needs of small and medium sized enterprises which form the backbone of the economy in every country. Despite the fact that versions of excellence models exist for smaller businesses, the interpretation of the criteria is inadequate. The rigid framework opposes the flexibility that supposedly characterises the models. The resources required for self-assessment are much too precious to be spent on a paper improvement exercise, especially when the benefits are not short term.
The final part of the paper makes some suggestions for the way forward and the need for further research allowing for such variances when implementing quality management methods so as to ensure their success.