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Despite the widespread use of excellence models as a self-assessment tool in the past two decades, little is known about the underlying logic behind the way that promoting organizations give weight to their criteria, and whether these scores align with business reality. This paper aims to analyze whether these scores coincide with the vision of managers and the real situation of business today.

This paper uses three different methods and two kinds of data to review the evolution of scores on criteria in excellence models since their creation and empirically analyses and compares the results with the vision of the managers.

The results show that the estimated weight of criteria in the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model (both directly perceived by managers and obtained with the statistical analysis) do not coincide with the value that the promoting organization has given to them, in its current version or in the previous versions.

This paper is focused exclusively on industrial companies so one discussion point that can serve as a basis for future research is to study whether there is any difference in the distribution of points between industrial organizations and services, or between private and public organizations.

The results show that, depending of the methodology used to evaluate the weight of each element of the excellence model, these weights could be different and are different from those proposed by EFQM. Therefore, if managers want to use the EFQM model of excellence for self-evaluation purposes, they should define their own weights for each element, in accordance with their own company characteristics. Leadership, strategy, people, partnership & resources and processes could have more or less importance in promoting the success of a business, according to the specific situation of each company.

This study has been made using three different methods and two kinds of data.

The purpose of the study has been to fill the gap detected in the literature and to analyze whether the application of management of R&D in accordance with UNE 166002:2021 allows companies to obtain higher product innovation and better performance, specifically incremental and radical product innovations.

The population used in this study included Spanish manufacturing organizations that were active, had more than 50 employees according to the SABI. The information was collected through a structured questionnaire previously tested using a company specializing in the sector under the supervision of the authors. A total of 1,154 companies were randomly contacted in order to reach an acceptable number of 225 valid questionnaires. The data analysis has been carried out with structural equation methodology.

The results obtained with a sample of 225 companies show that the application of this standard for innovation management promotes the development of new products with incremental and radical changes, and improves business performance. It has also been found that incremental and radical product innovations mediate the relationship between this standard and performance.

Firstly, the survey is only addressed to the company's operations manager. Secondly, the sample used is cross-sectional, whereas innovation management implies a broad implementation process.

Managers must know that radical and incremental product innovation can improve the company's operational performance. And the most direct implication of this work is that, those companies that are committed to the development of innovations should seriously consider the application of the principles incorporated in Standard 166,002, as an instrument that improves the results of innovation in the organization. Since this SIMS promotes both types of innovations, it improves results directly and indirectly through these product innovations.

The existing literature indicates that no empirical study has focused on the benefits of this SIMSs for innovation and BP. This paper fills this gap detected in the literature and analyzes the results of the implementation of this standard on incremental and radical product innovations and business performance.

This paper shows how organisational agility allows companies to adopt the necessary changes to remain competitive and produce with a lower environmental impact, implying customers in the value chain.

This investigation uses a cross-sectional design to collect data on the study variables from a sample of 260 Spanish manufacturing organisations. Structural equations with PLS are applied to test hypotheses.

Results show that organisational agility is positively related to eco-innovation. Furthermore, eco-innovation results in a positive relationship with organisational performance. Finally, it has been found that customer involvement positively moderates the effect of organisational agility on new green processes and products and makes green product innovations more successful.

Conclusions indicate that would be advisable that innovative companies promote capabilities such as organisational agility, and integrating customer involvement throughout their value chain, for developing successful new green products increasing their results with a lower environmental impact. Likewise, the customer’s involvement in eco-innovation projects has been found, in companies with agile behaviours, that could aim to increase their performance, helping to react more quickly to market trends and saving money in product development.

This investigation addresses three gaps previously identified in the literature. Firstly, it covers a lack of research on how agility could foster green innovation and how this could positively affect their performance outcomes. Secondly, it studies a moderating factor, customer involvement, and its effects on the relationship between organisational agility and eco-innovation in product and process and between eco-innovation in product and organisational performance. Thirdly, it introduces dynamic capabilities theory through agility concept to study the dynamic context of the eco-environment.

This paper aims to adopt Cameron and Quinn’s analysis of organizational culture and March’s learning framework to analyze the type of organizational culture (OC) that promotes learning competences and whether exploration and exploitation competences (ambidexterity) improve the European Foundation of Quality Management (EFQM) results (excellent results). In addition, this research tests if these competences exercise a mediating effect in the relationship between OC and performance.

A model is proposed whose relationships have been tested using structural equations. The sample was obtained from the SABI database. Two hundred valid questionnaires were returned via a webpage, in which four managers from each of the 200 organizations responded.

The results support the proposed relationships. Adhocracy, hierarchy and market culture have a positive relationship with excellent results. A hierarchical culture develops exploitation competences, and a market culture develops learning ambidexterity. Moreover, exploration and exploitation increase results. Finally, these two cultures indirectly influence results through exploration and exploitation competences.

The proposed model can help managers who implement the EFQM model to better understand how the culture of their organization promotes learning and how these two variables improve their performance.

Because the EFQM model requires organizations to use a knowledge management system to enhance the effect of the enabliers criteria on excellent results, the managers of these companies must know that only market and hierarchy cultures are suitable for it. Besides, this study highlights the importance of two cultural values for the implementation of the EFQM Model and, therefore, to promote excellent results: market orientation and process control.

This study fills an existing gap in the literature by combining exploitation, exploration, OC and EFQM results in a single model and highlights the importance of market orientation and process control for excellent results and knowledge exploration and exploitation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the effects of implementing a standardised innovation management system (SIMS) in accordance with the Spanish UNE 166.000 standard on technological and administrative innovations and company performance.

Structural equation modelling was used to test the research hypotheses with a sample of 200 manufacturing companies.

The results obtained show that implementing the SIMS promotes all types of innovations and their results. In addition, a positive relationship is found between administrative and technological innovation.

The results of this paper show the importance of innovation management systems for the effective development of innovation processes. Despite the limitations that may arise from differences between the measurements and actual implementation, the application of a system of standard-based innovation management encourages the development of different types of innovation.

The research validates the use of standardisation for the development of innovation as a useful tool for the management of innovation in the company. The UNE 166.000 standard provides a guide for those companies that intend to develop more effectively administrative and technological innovations.

This is the first known paper testing the implications of UNE 166.000 SIMS on both organisational innovation and performance in a sample of companies.

The high level of competition in the globalized business environment forces companies to innovate to remain competitive. Previous literature often cites information technology (IT) and supply chain collaboration as direct contributors to product innovation and IT as a direct enabler of supply chain collaboration. This suggests that IT could have an indirect effect on product innovation through supply chain collaboration, although this relationship has not been addressed yet. This paper aims to analyze empirically the direct impacts of IT and supply chain collaboration on incremental and radical product innovation and the indirect effect of IT on both types of product innovation through supply chain collaboration by using data collected from a sample of 200 manufacturing firms.

Structural equation modeling was used to check the research hypotheses with a sample of 200 manufacturing companies.

The results show supply chain collaboration has a positive effect on technological innovation, showing that the collaboration with external agents foster both incremental and radical innovations. Furthermore, results show that IT directly enhances both types of product innovation (incremental and radical) indirectly through supply chain collaboration.

This article supports the pursuit of open innovation that suggests the need to acquire external knowledge to be able to develop innovation projects. The use of tools that facilitate this transmission of knowledge becomes indispensable in environments in which companies must be involved in supply chains in which different external agents intervene and in which collaboration can promote the creation of synergies and superior competitive advantages.

Innovation requires more and more the use of knowledge management practices that capture external information to be used in the creation of new products. In this case, collaboration within a supply chain facilitates incremental and radical innovations. However, to strengthen this transfer of information and the adoption of behaviors that stimulate innovation, the company must use ITs.

This paper focus on the indirect effect of IT on product innovation through the creation of the collaborations with external agents. In spite of the importance of this relation, it has been poorly studied by previous literature. The paper’s greatest interest lies in the fact that ITs not only facilitate the transmission of knowledge but also facilitate other types of behavior among supply chain agents that invite collaboration and generate innovations.

The purpose of this study is to analyse the effect of organisational agility on environmental knowledge as an instrument for the successful development of eco-innovation in products.

This study used a cross-sectional design to collect data on the study variables from a sample of 184 Spanish manufacturing organisations. Structural equations with partial least squares were used to test the hypotheses.

Organisational agility is significantly linked to internal and external environmental knowledge. The results of this study highlight the effect of external knowledge on the success of eco-innovation. Internal environmental knowledge positively moderates the effect of external knowledge on the success of green products.

Based on the dynamic capabilities approach, a theoretical model has been proposed in which organisational agility is configured as an effective capacity for the development of environmental knowledge. The results confirm this relationship and indicate that, although internal environmental knowledge is not decisive in developing new green products, it does enhance the effect of external knowledge on the success of eco-innovation.

Innovative companies must implement organisational agility practices that promote environmental knowledge for the success of new green products. They should also promote both external and internal knowledge.

This study addresses the little explored area of the relationship between organisational agility and the successful development of new green products. The inherent particularities of eco-innovation prompt the need for further studies on the creation of specific knowledge for its promotion. This study concludes that adopting agile practices enables key environmental knowledge for this type of innovation to be created. Additionally, it explores the tensions arising from the dichotomy between internal and external knowledge, with scarce resources allocated to the most effective source. Although both types of knowledge seem to be equally relevant, external knowledge plays a more significant role in the case of eco-innovation. A final contribution of this study is the finding that internal knowledge can further enhance the effect of external knowledge on the development of successful green products.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: to study the relationship between reverse knowledge transfer (RKT) and headquarters’ innovation, examining potential moderators of such relationship, and to analyze the role of headquarters’ absorptive capacity (AC) and the coordination mechanisms they adopt as antecedents of RKT.

Quantitative data were collected from 104 Spanish multinational companies. Structural equation modeling was used to test hypotheses.

Findings provide the evidence of a positive relationship between RKT and headquarters’ innovation. This relationship is higher when the knowledge transferred from subsidiaries to parent units is of a more tacit nature, and also when the organizational distance between them is larger. The results also show that the parent unit’s AC and the use of mechanisms for coordinating company units can facilitate RKT.

MNCs that wish to be more innovative should be aware that it is worth the effort of fostering RKT, especially when knowledge is more tacit and comes from subsidiaries with different organizational practices and culture because these two variables increase the positive relationship that it was found between effective RKT and the development of innovation in the headquarters. Additionally, results show that in order to facilitate RKT, the improvement of headquarters’ AC and the use of mechanisms of coordination between them and its subsidiaries can be useful.

Up to the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical study that examines the link between RKT and headquarters innovation, and one of the few that focuses on headquarters characteristics as determinants of RKT. Thus, the findings contribute to the literature that highlights the benefits of RKT for MNC’s competitiveness, and that seeks to know how to promote RKT.

Over the last few decades, some researchers have analysed the role of total quality management (TQM) as a precursor of innovation. However, the relationship between TQM and organisational innovation remains unclear and contradictory. The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework intended to clarify the complex effect that the implementation of a TQM system has on organisational innovation, where market orientation (MO) and knowledge management (KM) play a mediator role.

Data in this study come from a survey of 706 Spanish CEOs. The results were analysed employing structural equation modelling to determine how TQM, MO and KM influence innovation.

The results of the empirical study show that there is a curvilinear effect between TQM and organisational innovation. Both MO and KM perspectives play a mediator role between TQM and innovation.

Managers should be aware that management based on TQM help organisations not only to get higher quality but also to be market oriented and better manage their knowledge; what will help them to develop innovations.

This research sheds light on the question of the relationship between TQM and organisational innovation that has received mixed conclusions in the literature. There is evidence in this research that the relationship between TQM and innovation responds to a curvilinear relationship, where high levels of TQM favour a more than proportionate effect on the development of innovation. It also clarifies the mechanisms by which this effect is produced, with MO and KM as mediator variables.

Multinational corporations face a more intense competence and a higher number of changes in the different countries they operate. In this regard, organizational learning and quality management are key elements that could help them to survive in the market. Convinced by the numerous benefits and competitive potential of total quality management (TQM) programmes, corporations have promoted its implementation. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the interaction between these programmes and organizational learning, more precisely with exploitation and exploration capabilities, in order to understand the way in which quality management programmes could help to develop learning in the companies.

Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed model. The sample comprised 111 medium-sized Spanish companies, with four different responses each. Constructs are measured with Likert scales previously tested in the literature.

The results show that TQM is positively and strongly related to both exploitation and exploration and that the relationship between TQM and exploitation is higher. Concerning the effects of exploitation and exploration on firm performance; results of the analysis show that only exploration capability positively affects organizational performance. It is also confirmed a positive effect of a TQM system in performance.

This research covers a gap in the literature regarding the relationship between organizational learning and TQM, particularly with the concepts of exploitation and exploration in the context of multinational companies.