Sustainability and Excellence: Pillars for Business Survival

Abstract

The chapter presents an overview of management models starting with self-assessment (ISO 9004) and continuing with the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) Excellence Model. Stakeholders’ analysis and their needs and expectations diagnostic are the baseline for building sustainable businesses. Sustainability and excellence are connected, and particular details of these approaches’ implementation are presented. Partnership development appears a key principle in the EFQM model. Based on companies’ strategies analysis, a simplified model may be proposed in order to support business survival in changing environments. Some guidelines to allow assessment of excellence fundamentals implementation are given. Based on experience and without seeing as exhaustive, a summary sheet of possible approaches and deployments is given. This may be used as a practical tool to connect actions implemented in organizations with the excellence model enablers, so as to facilitate assessment to explore the performance maturity level. The same sequence of Plan-Do-Check-Act relates approaches stated by ISO 26000 and sustainability initiatives. Embedding excellence and sustainability into business strategic objectives allows the management to define the framework for competitive continuous improvement.