Sustained quality award status in developing country: a study on the Dubai quality award recipients

Abstract

Quality has been regarded as one of the most important factors for achieving competitive advantage with an emphasis on excellence. Achieving excellence through quality award is a challenging task, but sustaining this achievement is even more challenging. Given the importance and benefits of continuously practicing with a quality award to organizations, very limited empirical research has been carried out especially in organizations in developing countries. This study attempts to reduce this knowledge gap by focusing exclusively on organizations that have received a Dubai Quality Award in the United Arab Emirates. The main purpose of this research is to identify those critical factors perceived as crucial for sustaining quality award status. To achieve this purpose, a structured questionnaire survey was carried out to elicit the opinions of quality managers from 138 quality award organizations about the importance of critical factors and their current practices. Survey results indicated that eight factors as the most critical factors to sustain quality award status. The results of this paper can be used by quality managers to prioritize the implementation of the proposed critical factors for long-term sustainability towards higher quality levels.