Use: The award promotes the sharing of successful performance strategies. To receive the ‘Baldrige Award’, an organization must have a world-class management system that ensures continuous improvement in delivering products and/or services. The award demonstrates effective and efficient operations and provides a way of engaging and responding to the Voice of the Customer (VOC).
Overview: The U.S. Congress established the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in 1987 to recognize companies in the United States who successfully implement quality management systems. Congress and then-President Ronald Reagan meant the award to not only honor the success of individual companies, but also to raise awareness of the need for quality management.
The MBNQA is the highest presidential honor an organization can receive for performance excellence. The Baldrige Foundation oversees the awards. The six categories are:
- Manufacturing
- Service company
- Small business
- Education
- Healthcare
- Nonprofit
An independent board determines the winners of each award (the board can give three awards in each category). The board judges applicants in seven key areas.
The 7 MBNQA Criteria
The board may give up to three awards in the six categories – a total of 18 per year – but that does not always happen. The board only considers applicants who meet a strict set of criteria. The board considers each based on achievements in seven areas. Collectively, these areas are known as the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence.
The seven areas of criteria include:
- Leadership: Leaders’ performance for the organization and the organization’s performance for the community.
- Strategy: The company’s success in planning and implementing strategic goals.
- Customers: How well the company meets the needs of customers and establishes long-term relationships with them.
- Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management: The use of data-driven decisions to drive performance.
- Workforce: The empowerment and level of involvement of an organization’s workforce.
- Operations: The use of process improvement to make changes in operations.
- Results: A measure of how well the company did against competitors, as well as in customer satisfaction, finance, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operations, social responsibility, and governance.
The board also judges the applicants on their adherence to a group of core values promoted by the Baldrige Foundation as part of the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence. These values include:
- Visionary leadership
- Customer-focused excellence
- Valuing people
- Organizational learning and agility
- Focus on success
- Managing for innovation
- Societal responsibility
- Ethics and transparency
- Delivering value and results
Congress named the award after Malcolm Baldrige, who served as Secretary of Commerce in the Reagan Administration. Baldrige, respected both home and abroad for his leadership on trade, business management and quality, died tragically in a rodeo accident while still serving in the cabinet.
Reagan and many in Congress pushed for the award because of increased competition from Asian and European companies – especially Japanese automakers – that started in the 1970s and continued into the 1980s. They emphasized quality because consumers started buying more from foreign companies because they made higher quality products than their American competitors.
