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The purpose of this paper is to present and discuss/reflect on some well‐known excellence frameworks or models in order to understand the development in the contents of excellence during the last 25 years and to understand the problems or limitations which such kind of models still may have.

The studies examine some leading excellence frameworks and models and discuss/identify their strengths as well as weaknesses. The chosen models and frameworks are Peters' and Waterman's eight excellence attributes (1982), Peter's and Austin's simplified excellence model (1985), lists of best practices (1998), Xerox excellence models (1990, 2002), the European excellence model (1992), Dahlgaard‐Park and Dahlgaard's 4P model (1999, 2004) and Toyota's 4P model.

Generally, excellence models and frameworks are inspired by the Japanese practices and they recognize the importance of the soft dimension of organizational realities. However, there are tendencies to interpret these models from reductionist and positivistic view and ignore the human aspect and the soft dimension when organizations try to implement the model in their struggle to achieve excellence. 4P model and the four aspects of organizational realities can reduce these negative tendencies.

The study documents how the selected leading models and frameworks about excellence have been developed and practiced during the last 25 years with identification of each frameworks background, strengths and limitations.

This paper aims to review total quality management (TQM) literature in the past three decades to identify the quality related key terms, to analyse their linkage among the identified key terms and their developmental trends.

Bibliometric and statistical methods are used to analyse article titles published in the Total Quality Management and Business Excellence journal during 1990–2019. The current research is based on a search from the ProQuest academic database and the journal’s website, resulting in 2,452 articles collected. The VOSviewer and Microsoft Excel were then used for the analyses.

A total of 52 key terms were extracted from the journal’s 2,452 article titles, the top three key terms in terms of occurrences were “quality,” “total quality management” and “service quality.” Five themes were then proposed from clustering the 52 key terms: “frameworks/models,” “essentials/enablers,” “methods/techniques,” “culture/characteristics” and “effects/results.” Trend analyses were also conducted regarding the five themes in an attempt to highlight the patterns of research publications from 1990 to 2019. It is found that the research publications for “essentials/enablers,” “methods and techniques” and “effects/results” have steadily increased during the analysis period, while “frameworks/models” and “culture/characteristic” have slightly decreased. These insights provide implication for the historical evolution of quality from “quality control,” “total quality management” and “service quality,” combining with the development of “service sciences.”

This paper highlights the concept of quality since its meaning has changed and evolved over time from quality control, TQM to service quality. And it is emerging in the present and future development of service sciences because of both of TQM and service sciences having the same nature of multidisciplinary background and characteristics. Also the authors can conclude that quality and service sciences are in fact two sides of the same coin because both of them having the same duality of “tangible-intangible” and “physical-virtual” faces which are the important topics that TQM should focus on.

This study aims to demonstrate the suitability of text-mining toolset for the discovery of trends in quality management (QM) literature in 2000-2019. The hypothesis was formulated that as the field of study is mature, the most important trends are related to deepening and broadening of the knowledge.

A novel approach to trend discovery was proposed. The computer-aided analysis of full-texts of papers led to increased reliability and level of detail of the achieved results and helped significantly reduce researchers’ bias. Overall, 4,833 papers from 8 journal dedicated to QM were analysed.

Trends discovery led to the identification of 45 trends: 17 long-lasting trends, 4 declining trends, 11 emerging trends and 13 ephemeris trends. They were compared to the results of earlier studies. New trends and potential gaps were discussed.

The results highlight the trends that gain or lose popularity, thus they can be used to focus studies, as well as find new subjects, which are not so popular yet. The knowledge about emerging trends is also important for those quality managers who strive for improvement of their efficiency.

The research was designed to bypass the limitations of previous studies. The use of text mining methods and analysis of full texts of papers delivered more detailed and reliable data. Resignation from predefinition of classification criteria significantly reduced researchers’ bias and allowed the discovery of new trends, not identified in previous studies.

The purpose of this paper is to review the Russian Federation Government Quality Award (RFGQA) over its 25-year existence.

This paper looks into the evolution, model and key provisions of RFGQA, based on the authors’ long-time experience as an Award assessor. Apart from that, methodologically, this study uses the desktop research method, comparative literature review.

The research results show that RFGQA over its 25 years has become the most popular approach to the development of organizational excellence for Russian enterprises and organizations, regardless of the sphere of activity.

This paper presents the core results of RFGQA’s 25-year existence. The comparison of the current Russian Quality Award model with the new European Foundation for Quality Management model is not analyzed.

This research paper extends current knowledge of national quality awards and presents an original set of information about RFGQA, its methodology and results.

An overall aim with a new human‐oriented TQM metrology is to help managers in giving answers to the questions of what to measure, how to measure and why? It is the purpose of this paper to give input to answering these questions. In doing so the measurement problems are to be discussed in relation to the context in which the measurements are applied. Some common risks or failures are also to be discussed when more complex or advanced measurements are used such as LISREL or PLS measurements.

The main methodology is to re‐interpret measurements from three company cases by having a special focus on understanding the importance of the human‐oriented dimension of TQM and Change Management. The European Excellence Model (EFQM) is used as the reference framework for understanding what to measure, how to measure and why?

The measurements support the view that establishing measurements related to the human dimension of TQM and Change gives new opportunities for understanding the results achieved or not achieved.

Because the research is based on a combination of theory and case studies it is believed that the findings can be generalized to most companies working under the laws of free competition. The specific measurement examples should not be copied but should be adapted carefully to other contexts and cultures.

The case companies analysed are two relatively big global industrial companies and a big national and government‐owned service company (Post Denmark). Case studies from small‐ and medium companies have not been analysed here but several materials from these kinds of companies support the conclusions in the paper.

This is the first paper towards a human‐oriented metrology for improvement and change. The main value of establishing performance measurement systems with a balanced focus on tangibles and intangibles (the human dimension) is that this kind of measurement is a necessity for understanding the root causes of the results achieved or not achieved.

The purpose of this paper is to review and identify the dominating paradigms within management control theories in order to investigate adoptability of the European excellence model (EEM) as an alternative management control model or a framework.

The paper has conceptual character based on a literature survey.

The six dominating paradigms are identified within management control theories and based on the analysis it is concluded that EEM can be adapted as a management control model if its limitations are supplemented with other ideas or frameworks.

This is the first study which investigates adaptability and adoptability of EEM as a management control model.

The authors analyze the principles and results of lean production and compare the lean production philosophy with the six sigma quality process and the principles of total quality management (TQM). At the end of the paper, it is discussed how to build the necessary company culture for having success with these principles/management philosophies.

Literature search and comparative analysis complemented with a Danish case on wastage in a core process.

It is shown that the lean production philosophy and the six sigma steps are essentially the same and both have developed from the same root – the Japanese TQM practices. The improvement process from six sigma, the DMAIC process, can be regarded as a short version of the Quality Story, which was developed in Japan in the 1960s as a standard for QC‐circle presentations. We conclude that the roadmaps of lean production and six sigma quality are examples of new alternative TQM roadmaps. We also conclude that especially with lean production and six sigma quality there seems to be too much focus on training people intools and techniques and at the same time too little focus on understanding the human factor, i.e. how to build the right company culture.

The detailed and historical analysis of six sigma quality, lean production and TQM combined with a focus on the human factor and the needed corporate culture.

The purpose of the paper is to elaborate, interpret, discuss and decode excellence in a new way by focusing on some of the critical success factors for attaining and sustaining excellence.

The framework used for analysis is an old text which explains how to attain excellence. Literature references from 2,500 years back and to excellence literature from the last 25 years, together with a few case studies, are used to “de‐code” the meaning and the complexity of the old text.

After final reflections it is concluded that the old text contains deep meanings and cover the complex nature of attaining and sustaining excellence. The few sentences are a kind of code, a crystallized form explaining how excellence can be attained.

This kind of analysis has not been done before. It is believed that the findings will have a great value both for researchers and for practitioners as well as organizations which are trying to attain excellence.