A business excellence approach to generic benchmarking in SMEs

Aims to carry out generic benchmarking within a group of SMEs involved in applying the business excellence model as part of TQM improvement initiatives. Examines how generic benchmarking enables business excellence to be developed in the organisations. A lot of existing studies on business excellence and SMEs assume that large organisation praxis can be scaled down and applied to SMEs. There is need for studies which allow SMEs to develop their own understanding of business excellence and share best practice across SMEs. First, examines 20 SME case studies to determine critical success factors in business excellence for the SMEs. Second, chooses a sub‐group of eight SMEs for a more detailed study. Third, from these benchmarking studies, chooses a final group of three organisations to develop and implement benchmarked strengths using focus groups. The findings show how benchmarking can enable SMEs to increase the rate of improvement of their quality initiatives.

[1]  R. H. Waterman,et al.  In Search of Excellence , 1983 .

[2]  C. Prahalad,et al.  The Core Competence of the Corporation , 1990 .

[3]  Sumantra Ghoshal,et al.  Changing the Role of Top Management: Beyond Strategy to Purpose , 1994 .

[4]  Abby Ghobadian,et al.  Total quality management in SMEs , 1996 .

[5]  Mark S. Demarest.  Understanding knowledge management , 1997 .

[6]  M. Zairi.  Effective Management Of Benchmarking Projects , 1998 .

[7]  H. D. Thomas,et al.  SUCCESSFUL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT PROJECTS , 1998 .

[8]  D. Ulrich,et al.  A new mandate for human resources. , 1998, Harvard business review.

[9]  Alan Brown,et al.  Venturing Down the TOM Path for SME's , 1998 .

[10]  Rodney McAdam,et al.  Business process re-engineering in the public sector: A study of staff perceptions and critical success factors , 1999, Bus. Process. Manag. J..

[11]  Rodney McAdam,et al.  Taking a critical perspective to the European Business Excellence Model using a balanced scorecard approach: a case study in the service sector , 1999 .

[12]  D. Schumacher,et al.  The Business Excellence Model , 1999 .

[13]  D. Longbottom.  Benchmarking in the UK: an empirical study of practitioners and academics , 2000 .

[14]  M. Porter.  What is strategy , 2000 .

[15]  Mohamed Zairi,et al.  The transfer of best practices: how to build a culture of benchmarking and continuous learning – part 2 , 2000 .

[16]  Matthew Hinton,et al.  Best practice benchmarking in the UK , 2000 .

[17]  J. H. Dyer,et al.  Creating and managing a high‐performance knowledge‐sharing network: the Toyota case , 2000 .

[18]  Mohamed Zairi,et al.  The transfer of best practices: how to build a culture of benchmarking and continuous learning – part 1 , 2000 .

[19]  L. Bossidy,et al.  The job no CEO should delegate. , 2001, Harvard business review.

[20]  Robert G. Lord,et al.  Leadership and Information Processing: Linking Perceptions and Performance , 2002 .