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Although the debate about the interplay between quality management and organizational culture is long established, extant knowledge about their link is not consistent. This article attempts to fill such a gap by integrating current perspectives and insights through a literature review.

A domain-based literature review has been conducted, which followed the Scientific Procedures and Rationales for Systematic Literature Reviews. The knowledge core consisted of 76 items, which were analysed through bibliographic coupling and co-citation analysis. An interpretive approach was taken to articulate the study findings.

The current scholarly debate unfolds through four research streams, which emphasize the need for joint optimizing quality management and organizational culture embracing a longitudinal perspective. Similarly, the theoretical roots inspiring reviewed contributions are distributed in four clusters, which rely on the assumption that organizational excellence derives from the harmonization of quality management and organizational culture.

Quality management necessitates a supportive organizational culture to set the ground for excellence. At the same time, it modifies the inner traits of the organizational culture. Such cultural changes should be carefully handled to ensure a dependable quality orientation. Achieving organizational excellence involves mastering the interplay between quality management and organizational culture.

This article delivers an unprecedented systematization of the scientific literature. It identifies the main research streams through which the debate on quality management and culture evolves, shedding light on the main conceptual roots inspiring recent scholarly advancements. Alongside overcoming the fragmentation of the extant debate, this review enables the envisioning of an agenda for further developments.

This study aims to explore how haute cuisine excellence is and can be self-represented on the websites of three-star restaurants and juxtaposed onto the websites of external authoritative food guides.

In total, 26 French Michelin three-star restaurant websites and their reviews in the prominent Michelin and Gault and Millau dining guides were examined. This data was then processed using lexicometric software.

Five semantic universes emerged, showing that restaurants and dining guides do not emphasize the same elements of culinary excellence. While restaurant websites emphasize the charismatic leadership role of the chef through family history, professional recognition and vicarious learning, the two iconic guides are far from rating the criteria they claim to: For the Michelin Guide, criteria other than cuisine appear central. Conversely, Gault and Millau, far from its nouvelle cuisine principles advocating democratization at lower cost, insists on fine products.

It remains essential for restaurants to use a repertoire of cultural components and symbols, capitalize on the charismatic and architectural roles of their chef and showcase fine products that are representative of classical cuisine. Storytelling and dynamic narrative add-ons, regularly updated on large-audience social media, appear central to increasing restaurants’ perceived value, communicating innovation and attesting to their singularity and uniqueness.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study to overlap the lexical perspectives of three-star restaurants and iconic guides’ websites.

This work analyses quality management (through the European Foundation for Quality Management-EFQM-model) and transformational leadership in hotels in Spain.

The study analyses 102 5-star and 5-star large luxury hotels that answer a questionnaire on transformational leadership and the EFQM model. It analyses the degree of importance of quality and transformational leadership in hotels, the significant differences between groups of hotels (according to stars, size, modality and type of product) and the association between transformational leadership and quality.

The results show the levels of quality and transformational leadership, minor significant differences between groups and an association between the two variables. In general, chain-affiliated hotels have a higher level of leadership and a more advanced employee and process management than independent hotels. Also, those hotels that focus on a vacational product show a lower attention to the strategy dimension in the EFQM model. The number of employees is not an important factor to adopt quality. Finally, transformational leadership allows hotels to advance in the development of quality management.

Although there are studies on quality management that show the importance of leadership for quality, there are few studies that examine transformational leadership and quality in the same study, mainly in the tourism industry, and especially in the case of the hotel industry.

This paper aims to explore how leaders can develop value-based leadership for sustainable quality development in Lean manufacturing.

A qualitative meta-analysis was conducted using data from a three-year study of Lean manufacturing in Sweden using the Shingo business excellence model as an analytical framework.

This study demonstrates that leaders can develop value-based leadership to support Lean manufacturing by defining and articulating the organization’s values and accompanying behaviors that are needed to support the strategic direction; creating forums and time for leaders to identify the why behind decisions and reflect on their experiences to be able to lead a transformative process; and using storytelling to create a coaching culture to connect values and behaviors, to the processes and systems of work.

This paper contributes insights for developing value-based leadership to support a systemic approach to sustainable quality development in lean manufacturing. Findings are based on a limited case sample size of three manufacturing companies in Sweden.

The findings were derived using a unique methodological approach combining storytelling, appreciative inquiry and coaching with traditional data collection methods including surveys and interviews to identify, define and shape value-based leadership in Lean manufacturing.

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.

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.

Organizations rely on their business processes to achieve their business objectives and ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations. Hence, conformance to process specifications is essential to remain compliant. Various factors influence an organization’s ability to operate in conformance to its process specifications. This study investigates the influence of business process management (BPM)-supportive culture and individual process orientation on process conformance.

A construct was created for perceived process conformance and two constructs were selected from literature to represent BPM-supportive culture and individual process orientation. A survey was conducted with 178 employees of a global enterprise, hypotheses were formulated, and a statistical model was constructed and validated.

Results pinpoint the key role of the BPM-supportive culture in influencing both individual process orientation and conformance. Individual process orientation is also found to have a significant influence on process conformance. The findings provide additional evidence for the significance of human-related aspects of BPM in achieving BPM success.

The contributions of this paper help better understand how soft factors of BPM contribute to employees’ process conformance drawing on and relating concepts of BPM and organizational routines.

This chapter looks at the discursive dimension of the working environment in research and higher education organizations; more specifically at neoliberal managerial discourse and at how it participates in shaping the way researchers, teachers and support staff perceive themselves and their experiences. It is based on a multiple case study and combines an intersectional and a socio-clinical approach. The empirical data is constituted by in-depth interviews with women conducted in Ireland and Chile, and includes some observations made in France. A thematic analysis of individual narratives of self-ascribed experiences of being bullied enables to look behind the veil drawn by managerial discourse, thus providing insights into power vectors and power domains contributing to workplace violence. It also shows that workplace bullying may reinforce identification to undervalued social categories. This contribution argues that neoliberal managerial discourse, by encouraging social representations of “neutral” individuals at work, or else celebrating their “diversity,” conceals power relations rooting on different social categories. This process influences one’s perception of one’s experience and its verbalization. At the same time, feeling assigned to one or more of undervalued social category can raise the perception of being bullied or discriminated against. While research has shown that only a minority of incidents of bullying and discrimination are reported within organizations, this contribution suggests that acknowledging the multiplicity and superposition of categories and their influence in shaping power relations could help secure a more collective and caring approach, and thus foster a safer work culture and atmosphere in research organizations.

With the growing need for employees to be innovative, public-sector organizations are investing in employee training. This study aims to examine the effects of a combined Lean Six Sigma and innovation training, using action learning, on public-sector employees’ creative role identity and innovative work behavior.

The authors studied a public service agency in Singapore in which a five-day Lean Innovation Training was implemented, using a combination of Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools, with a simulation on day one and subsequent team-based project coaching, spread over six months. The authors administered pre- and postintervention surveys among all the employees, and initiated group interviews and observations before, during and after the intervention.

Creative role identity and innovative work behavior had significantly improved six months after the intervention, enabled through senior management’s transformational leadership. The training induced managers to role-model innovative work behaviors while cocreating, with their employees, a renewal of their agency’s core processes. The three completed improvement projects contributed to an innovative work culture and reduced service turnaround time.

Starting with a role-playing simulation on the first day, during which leaders and followers swapped roles, the action-learning type training taught all the organizational members to use various Lean Six Sigma and Creative Problem-Solving tools. This nimble Lean Innovation Training, and subsequent team-based project coaching, exemplifies how advancing the staff’s creative role identity can have a positive impact.

Multinational business deliver value via multiple sites with similar operational capacities. The age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) delivers significant opportunities for the deployment of digital tools for business optimization. Therefore, this study aims to study the Industry 4.0 implementation for multinationals.

The key objective of this research is multi-site systems integration using a reproducible, modular and standardized “Cyber Physical System (CPS) as-a-Service”.

A best practice reference architecture is adopted to guide the design and delivery of a pioneering CPS multi-site deployment. The CPS deployed is a cloud-based platform adopted to enable all manufacturing areas within a multinational energy and petrochemical company. A methodology is developed to quantify the system environmental and sustainability benefits focusing on reduced carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions and energy consumption. These results demonstrate the benefits of standardization, replication and digital enablement for multinational businesses.

The research illustrates the ability to design a single system, reproducible for multiple sites. This research also illustrates the beneficial impact of system reuse due to reduced environmental impact from lower CO₂ emissions and energy consumption. The paper assists organizations in deploying complex systems while addressing multinational systems implementation constraints and standardization.