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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.

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.

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 study investigates the effect of total quality management (TQM) on customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction and company reputation.

The study results rely on a structured survey conducted among an extensive sample of Finnish SMEs. In addition to the examination of the relationship between TQM and company performance in terms of customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction and company reputation, the study takes a view on the possible effects of the industry, the company size and the certified quality system.

The results reveal that two TQM dimensions, namely Customer Focus and Product Management, were related to companies' customer satisfaction, whereas four TQM dimensions, namely Management/leadership, Customer Focus, Personnel Management and Risk Management, were related to personnel satisfaction. None of the TQM dimensions were related to company reputation. The control variables – the industry, the company size and the certified quality system – were not found to affect customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction or company reputation.

Most previous studies have been based on traditional TQM classification and have not shown the effects of the latest TQM-related dimensions. Compared to previous studies, this work integrates risk management, digitization, system deployment efficiency and stakeholder management into TQM, which has not been implemented in any previous study. The roles of hard and soft TQM factors have been carefully considered in this study; thus, the study does not place too much emphasis on either direction but provides a balanced picture of the performance of the management systems studied. Although there are studies on the effects of TQM on personnel satisfaction, customer satisfaction and reputation, they are based on a much narrower definition of TQM than that in this study. The business environment is constantly changing, but only a few studies have been conducted to extend the TQM approach. This has led to duplication of studies, and the effects of performance-relevant procedures have not been extensively studied in the past as part of TQM. Therefore, the concept of this study brings significant added value to TQM research and returns the TQM concept to the overall level while considering the requirements of the ISO 9001: 2015 and EFQM 2019 quality standards. The study also considers the effects of ISO 9001 certification and EFQM requirements.

This study examines whether certification improves the dimensions of total quality management (TQM) and whether the impact of certification is similar across companies of different sizes and industries. The benefits of certification for companies have been widely discussed in recent years. The general debate has been partly marked by the dispute about whether companies will benefit more from certification or the implementation of TQM. This debate has led to numerous studies on the benefits of certification; however, few studies simultaneously have examined traditional TQM issues and the requirements of the new quality standard, ISO 9001: 2015, as well as the updated European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) criteria.

This study was conducted via a survey of Finnish SMEs and covered both industrial and service companies. The study comprehensively compared industrial companies with service companies and small companies with medium-sized companies.

In industrial and small enterprises, certification clearly has a positive effect on the dimensions of TQM, but a similar effect was not observed in medium-sized enterprises or in the service sector.

This is one of the first studies to examine the effect of certification on TQM in different types of SMEs while simultaneously considering EFQM and ISO 9001:2015 in Finland. The significant originality of this research lies in the formation of a comprehensive research framework for the dimensions of TQM.