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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.

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 chapter compares research management and administration (RMA) associations worldwide and the existing professional development frameworks (PDFs) for RMAs. The comparison is based on a study of 22 national, European Union (EU), and international RMA associations/networks which was carried out between April and June 2020 and revised in 2022; it aims at providing a comprehensive overview of skills and competences of RMAs as a profession to enable worldwide benchmarking and analysis.

The benchmarking analysis could provide useful information for those working on the development of professional frameworks training targeted at RMAs, or the recognition of RMA as a profession.

Despite many efforts within organizations toward business process orientation (BPO), research on real-world experiences remains in its infancy. The purpose of this paper is to redress the existing knowledge gap by analyzing a Swedish public housing company that has made notable effects regarding BPO and to explore lessons learned from the BPO journey (from 1998 to 2013).

The point of departure is principles in the BPO foundation, principles of successful BPM and effects in empirically based literature. The reconstruction of the narrative case study describes milestones and critical junctions, as well as effects based on quantitative and qualitative data.

Effects in BPO are demonstrated in terms of higher customer satisfaction, increased innovative ability, improved operational performance, higher employee satisfaction and, as a result of these, increased profitability. Theoretical constructs with implications for the theory building on BPO are suggested in a three-layer management framework – with capabilities and abilities emerging from the case study used as an illustrative example.

Lessons are learned regarding critical practices related to advancement in BPO. A strategy-building process based on eight design propositions is suggested to define the pre-conditions for BPO in an organization.

This is the first longitudinal case study to provide a comprehensive view and detailed insights of a BPO journey and top management performance toward a business process-oriented organization. Practitioners and BPM community get valuable insights into how the temporality and the context shape the BPO maturity process in terms of new organizational structure and roles during the journey.

Drawing on resource and capability theory, this study aimed to analyze the relationship between the dynamic capabilities (DC), the knowledge management (KM) process (KMP) and results in customers and people. More specifically, the study argues that the KM process mediates the relationship between DC and the results outlined above. In addition, a predictive analysis is carried out that demonstrates the relevance of the KM process in the model.

The study sample is made up of 118 Spanish organizations that have some kind of recognition of excellence awarded by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM). Partial least squares methodology is used to validate the research model, the hypothesis testing and the predictive analysis.

The results show that organizations which leverage the DC through the KMP improve customer and people outcomes. Moreover, the predictive power is higher when the KMPmediates the relationship between the DC and the results.

There is no consensus in the literature on the relationship between DC, KM and performance. Moreover, there are also not enough papers that study KM or DC through the dimensions that define these constructs or variables. Given this need, this work considers the KMP according to the stages of knowledge creation, storage, transfer and application. Similarly, DC is dimensioned in sensing, learning, integrating and coordinating capabilities. These, as reconfigurators of knowledge assets, influence the KMP. Accordingly, the empirical model connects these knowledge domains and analyses their link to outcomes.

To determine whether to entrust the European Union (EU) to create a new nonfinancial reporting framework or endorse the extant reporting framework developed by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), this study aims to explore whether the mandatory implementation of the EU Directive positively impacted the GRI-based environmental disclosure.

The authors compared the pre- and post-EU Directive environmental disclosure of 16 Italian environmentally sensitive companies. The authors used an extended coding scheme and developed a unique scoring system to compare the quantitative and qualitative changes in environmental disclosure.

The analysis showed that the quantity of environmental disclosure increased after the mandatory EU Directive adoption. The most significant change was observed regarding the disclosure topics explicitly required by the Italian legislature. Additionally, disclosure of soft information continued to prevail over that of hard information in the post-Directive period. While the Directive boosted the level of adherence to GRI standards, Italian companies disclosed information that could be easily mimicked (soft) instead of objective measures that could be verified (hard). In light of this evidence, the endorsement of extant GRI standards could be a valuable option for enhancing the comparability and transparency of environmental disclosure.

This study used an original extended coding system and proposed related environmental disclosure indexes that allow monitoring changes in environmental disclosure over time. To the authors’ best knowledge, this study is one of the few that justifies the significant impact of regulation (here the EU Directive) on the increase in environmental disclosure and that uses hard and soft information typology to examine the quality of environmental disclosure.

This paper aims to describe the results of applying ethical AI requirements to a healthcare use case. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of using open educational resources for Trustworthy AI to provide recommendations to an AI solution within the healthcare domain.

This study utilizes the Hackathon method as its research methodology. Hackathons are short events where participants share a common goal. The purpose of this to determine the efficacy of the educational resources provided to the students. To achieve this objective, eight teams of students and faculty members participated in the Hackathon. The teams made suggestions for healthcare use case based on the knowledge acquired from educational resources. A research team based at the university hosting the Hackathon devised the use case. The healthcare research team participated in the Hackathon by presenting the use case and subsequently analysing and evaluating the utility of the outcomes.

The Hackathon produced a framework of proposed recommendations for the introduced healthcare use case, in accordance with the EU's requirements for Trustworthy AI.

The educational resources have been applied to one use-case.

This is the first time that open educational resources for Trustworthy AI have been utilized in higher education, making this a novel study. The university hosting the Hackathon has been the coordinator for the Trustworthy AI Hackathon (as partner to Trustworthy AI project).