EFQM Excellence Model and TQM: an empirical comparison

Abstract

The EFQM Excellence Model (EEM) has been used by managers and academics as a proxy for the implementation of total quality management (TQM). However, at the present time there is no empirical evidence that shows that the systems are equivalent. This paper empirically analyses whether companies that implement the EEM as a management tool are indirectly using TQM. The results make it possible to conclude that EEM and TQM, although not the same, follow a similar path and it can be expected that a company with high scores at EEM will have high odds of being a TQM company. In addition, both systems provide a means for improving performance according to the results measured by the EEM.

Keywords:

• TQM
• EFQM
• EEM
• Business Excellence Model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support received from the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación for the project ‘Efectos de la aplicación del modelo EFQM en la gestión y los resultados empresariales (referencia ECO2008–02387)’. This paper is a result of this research project.