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This study aims to analyze how startups organize their purchasing activities to improve operative excellence and become attractive customers.

The authors use a two-phase exploratory approach with semistructured interviews and a World Café. In total, 20 startup purchasers and suppliers participated. It is an international study with participants from eight countries (Belgium, Brazil, France, Germany, Hungary, The Netherlands, the UK and the USA).

The authors find that startups organize the purchasing function in five ways: partial outsourcing, transactional-oriented, strategic only, outsourced purchasing and full department. Each type has advantages and disadvantages regarding operative excellence. The authors identify type-specific antecedents to operative excellence: forecasting, payment habits, ordering process, contact accessibility and quick decision-making.

The value of this paper is that it offers entrepreneurs a framework to organize startup purchasing activities, including outsourcing options. Furthermore, it provides theoretical contributions that expand the topic of purchasing and supply organization and operative excellence to the startup context.

The value of this paper is that, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to explore purchasing organization and operative excellence in startups.

This study aims to reflect on quality, sustainability and resilience as emerging organisational priorities within total quality management (TQM) and organisational excellence.

The paper uses a conceptual approach based on reflection and theoretical studies on the philosophical foundations of quality, excellence, resilience and sustainability as cornerstones for organisational excellence. Bearing in mind that sustainable excellence rests upon a combination of systemic and soft issues that define organisational ability for resilience and sustainability, there is a need to analyse and reflect on short business cases from world-leading companies and further reflect on the fundamental principles, which have helped such companies to survive, grow and sustain. This study includes such a business case – the LEGO case. In addition, a Japanese case has been included. Japanese training material on human motivation developed in the 1980s exemplifies how company managers were trained, at that time, to understand and practice human motivation, excellence principles and tools.

Organisational excellence constitutes an evolving concept as the world becomes more chaotic and interconnected with multiple disruptive shocks. Organisational excellence challenges the inflexibilities of Newtonian mindsets, recognising the paramount importance of interactions and further underlining the significance of invisible elements such as human potentiality, motivation and values that formulate the principles of organisational excellence.

The paper investigates the notions of quality, resilience and sustainability and their relation to motivation and organisational excellence within the framework of business management and TQM. A world-leading company – LEGO – will be used to exemplify the theoretical findings together with the Japanese Motivation Training Programme case.

As a Quality Management (QM) framework, the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model has stakeholder management at its core. In EFQM (2012), based on which assessments were made until 2021, “creating a sustainable future” was a fundamental principle, but how it translated to a Sustainability Orientation and delivered to stakeholders remains questionable. This study aims to investigates the Sustainability Orientation within EFQM (2012) and its associations with Results for stakeholders.

Longitudinal assessments of recognized-for-excellence organizations by a partner of EFQM are considered. Using factor analysis, scores on the sub-criteria that defined “creating a sustainable future” are investigated, and a Sustainability Orientation is inferred. Panel regressions and structural equation modeling assess the correlations between Sustainability Orientation and Results. A qualitative analysis follows, where sustainability reports from role-models within this population are text mined to examine whether and how they reflected the guidance in EFQM (2012) concerning “creating a sustainable future”.

Direct and indirect positive associations between the Sustainability Orientation implied by EFQM (2012) and stakeholder-performance are confirmed. Yet, inferences from text mining of reported priorities of role-models of excellence illustrate that EFQM (2012) might have driven different strategies towards sustainability.

Despite conceptualizations that the EFQM model embeds a Sustainability Orientation, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, its existence and likely impact remain to be examined. By combining longitudinal statistical analysis, structural equation models and text mining, consistent insights on the link between Sustainability Orientation and organizational performance are obtained.

Traditional studies in the sociology of science have highlighted the self-organized character of the academic community. This article focuses on recent interrelated changes that alter that distinctive governance structure and its related patterns of competition and cooperation. The changes that we identify here are contractualization and large-scale cooperative research. We use different data sources to exemplify these new patterns and discuss the illustrative role of research clusters in German academia. Research clusters as funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) are both a highly prestigious scarce good in the competition for reputation and resources and a means of fostering cooperation. Our analysis of this German example reveals that this new institutional configuration of universities as organizations, academic researchers, and the state has a profound effect on organizational practices. We discuss the implications of our empirical findings with regard to collegiality in academia. Ultimately, we anticipate a further weakening of collegial bonds, not only because universities and the state have become more active in shaping the nature of academic competition and cooperation but also because of the increasing strategic and individualistic orientation of academic researchers. In the final section, we summarize our findings and address the need for further research and an international comparative perspective.

Although the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model has been widely adopted throughout Europe, a thorough examination of the factors that contribute to the internalisation of the model (i.e. a substantive adoption) has been neglected in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to present a model that analyses the drivers of the real internalisation of the EFQM excellence model, with a focus on the role of motives for adoption, and appraisal and compensation systems.

An empirical study was carried out based on a sample of Spanish organisations that had been awarded EFQM recognition. Structural equation models, cluster analysis and ANOVA were used to examine the research questions.

Internal motives concerning the creation of a participative style are the main driver of internalisation. Moreover, having an appraisal system-oriented towards the development of employees helps the substantive adoption of the EFQM model. These findings reinforce the importance of the soft elements of the EFQM model.

This study enhances evidence about the motives for adoption and their influence on the internalisation of the EFQM model. It analyses internalisation in a novel context, EFQM recognised organisations, and contributes to the debate about the efficacy of the EFQM model to performance improvement, by unveiling the factors that could foster the internalisation of the model within the organisational routines.

This study aims to analyze what promotes the adoption of open innovation (OI) in the foodservice sector. Specifically, it seeks to shed light on the bottom-up mechanisms (the microfoundations) that allow a foodservice firm to organize for OI.

The research design is an in-depth exploratory case study with 18 semi-structured interviews. The findings have been triangulated with documentation available on the corporate website, the project reports and direct observation. Data were analyzed using an inductive approach, coding individual interview transcripts.

This study identifies three categories of capabilities that have to be spread to different organizational levels: the capability to sense organizational triggers to change, to develop external collaborations and knowledge exchanges with different parties and the management's ability to be aware of organizational imperatives and the need to proceed with process adjustment. Results highlight the importance of sensing organizational triggers, allowing a quick switch between new strategies in implementing an OI approach. It was crucial for the company to co-develop new products and services with a large audience of stakeholders, not only limited to customers. The case remarks on the required ability of the organization and management team to activate mechanisms aimed at reconfiguring the competencies within each business unit, keeping an alignment with the needs of the stakeholders.

The study emphasizes the multi-level characteristics of OI and provides a framework for microfoundations on how to organize for OI. Results contribute to the recent debate on the skills and routines an organization should design and promote within their employees.

This study aims to help nonprofit organizations (NPOs) implement business excellence models (BEMs). The authors identify and rank critical success factors and barriers to implementing BEMs among NPOs in Saudi Arabia and investigate the impact of human resources availability on BEM implementation in these organizations.

Based on the review of relevant literature, the authors designed a questionnaire completed by 138 NPOs. Factor analysis was used to measure and rank the criticality of success factors and barriers to BEM implementation. A Kruskal–Wallis nonparametric test was conducted to compare answers across groups classified by the number of full-time employees in the organization.

The study identifies the five most critical success factors for implementing BEMs in Saudi NPOs: data analysis and reporting capabilities, effective organizational communication, implementation strategy and approach, use of benchmarking and adoption of a clear governance framework. The five most critical barriers to implementing BEMs are the lack of a culture of continuous improvement, organizational strategy, qualified employees, customer orientation and clear organizational roles and responsibilities. The number of full-time employees in Saudi NPOs does not significantly impact the success or failure of implementing BEMs.

This paper is a continuation of research that aims to increase BEM adoption among NPOs, including micro-NPOs, in Saudi Arabia and, by extension, other countries.

The current study has a two-fold purpose. Firstly, it aims to analyze the extent to which knowledge management (KM) affects the performance of individuals (task and contextual) on the one hand and that of organizations (product or service, perceived and financial) on the other hand. Secondly, it proposes to investigate the mediating effect of motivation and innovation in the relationship between KM and individual and organizational performance.

Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was employed in this study, with mediation analysis performed using advanced PLS-SEM techniques. A total of 1,284 respondents from organizations in both the public and private sectors were included in the sample.

The findings emphasize that KM has a more significant direct effect on individual performance compared to organizational performance. Concurrently, in terms of indirect influence, it is found that KM, through motivation and innovation, has a positive and significant effect on both individual and organizational performances, with a higher influence on the organizational one.

The originality of the work can be noted in designing two different structural models to represent the proposed relationships at the individual and organizational levels. These findings could provide organizational decision makers with empirical evidence, helping them (1) internalize the significance of the KM process in organizations as well as its subsequent effects on individual and organizational performance and (2) identify factors that mediate variable relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on three fundamental human-related behaviour factors associated with Lean Six Sigma (LSS) projects in German manufacturing small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the readiness of people (managers and their staff) to commence LSS projects. These are core personal competence, strategic vision of the people and the organisational culture of the specific organisation.

Based on a thorough review of the academic literature a set of hypotheses were constructed to examine the level of association between people’s competence, vision and culture with LSS readiness within SMEs. This was done using correlation and regression analysis. Data collection were carried out in seven different German manufacturing SMEs involved in aerospace supply and agro-food manufacturing using a survey instrument.

It was found that there is a strong positive association between the core competence of people and organisational culture with readiness for commencing LSS in the manufacturing SMEs studied. The core values of people, education level and the vision of making continuous quality improvement were identified as key variables in promoting LSS readiness in these manufacturing SMEs. This study indicates that these “softer” variables can be essential to successful LSS implementation and need to be explored further before undertaking the process.

From the perspective of the implementers of LSS the results of this research could be of interest to different manufacturing SMEs intending to embark upon an LSS journey as it highlights the significance of human-related behavioural factors in the process. SME organisations may consider carrying out development or training with their managers and employees around personal and organisational values, addressing core competence and strengthening organisational culture in order to facilitate LSS readiness and enhance the prospect of its success.

It would appear that this LSS research has not been carried out within the German manufacturing SME context before and although discrete in nature has surfaced the “softer” variables of core competence of staff and organisational culture as important readiness issues to address when undertaking LSS. This integrated approach of human behavioural factors, organisational culture, LSS and manufacturing SMEs demonstrates the originality of the research.