TY  - JOUR
AB  - Peters and Waterman brought the concept of excellence into the conscious practice of organizations during the early 1980s. Theory has timidly followed afterwards. However, the concept existed before and it is broadly used nowadays. This article attempts to synthesize the evolution of excellence, especially in the last 20 years, during which time some legitimate counter developments have shown important limits for these “excellence stages”. Those counter developments tend to be enlightening but have often brought about confusion. Where could excellence be tomorrow and what should organizations do about it? Concludes from this analysis that: deep conceptual work is necessary; the importance of implementation is often mentioned in the literature but not addressed in detail; the idea of sustainability may need further development, especially concerning a clear separation between the socio‐ecological and the competitive advantage perspectives; the different excellence approaches have not looked deeply into the differences between large and small enterprises, public and private sectors, and the organization itself and its components.
VL  - 15
IS  - 4
SN  - 0954-478X
DO  - 10.1108/09544780310486146
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1108/09544780310486146
AU  - Hermel Philippe
AU  - Ramis‐Pujol Juan
PY  - 2003
Y1  - 2003/01/01
TI  - An evolution of excellence: some main trends
T2  - The TQM Magazine
PB  - MCB UP Ltd
SP  - 230
EP  - 243
Y2  - 2024/04/25
ER  -