An investigation of the global awareness of business excellence and best practices in promoting the use of business excellence

This research was undertaken to investigate how Business Excellence (BE) Custodians (BECs) within a country or region, promote BE. A review of the literature revealed a gap in the understanding of how BECs promote BE and that there is limited data on the popularity of BE worldwide. To address these issues a survey and structured interview was designed in collaboration with the Global Excellence Model (GEM) Council and 65 BECs were encouraged to participate in the research. In total, 29 BECs from 26 countries completed the survey whilst 13 also participated in optional structured interviews. BECs perceived that on average 11%–20% of CEOs and organisational heads were aware of BE and that awareness had slightly increased in the last three years, however, another key finding was that there is a lack of BE awareness data and lack in the rigour of data collection by the BECs. The promotional activity considered to be the most important to focus on and improve for the next few years and most impactful on awareness was ‘marketing of BE to CEO’s/senior managers/board of directors’. Best practices were identified such as collaborating with assessors to promote BE to their networks, making on-site presentations to explain BE frameworks, and carrying out BE impression surveys to estimate BE awareness levels. This research collected data directly from the BECs worldwide and investigated how they promote BE in their country/region. It provides recommendations on how BECs could improve their BE promotional activities to raise BE awareness levels.