The effects of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award criteria on the learning systems of selected educational institutions: A study of six state Baldrige-based quality award program winners.

摘要

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) program, established by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in 1987, has become a recognized framework to measure, assess, and improve manufacturing, service, and small business performance. Included in this framework are major elements associated with strategic planning, organizational structure, operational processes, results, information gathering, analysis, and use.; The growth in the use of quality management principles in the education sector has, over the last decade, significantly increased. As a foundation for this growth, the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award system, and its inherent criteria, are becoming widely used as the basis for educational organizational management. However, little research concentrating on the advantages and benefits, especially within the learning systems, witnessed by educational organizations employing the Baldrige system, has been published. Therefore, the overall intent of this research was to better understand the effects of employing such a system in an educational organization. To this aim, the research employed case studies of six educational organizations that had not only employed the Baldrige-based quality management system but had been singled out, by a representative of their peers, and had been granted their state's highest level Baldrige-based award.; The research led to several conclusions including: (a) a noted number of institutions employing the Baldrige model and data suggesting these numbers are increasing, (b) the use of the Baldrige framework provided an organizational system for continuous improvement, (c) the Baldrige model directed the attention and activities of institutional members toward satisfying stakeholder needs, (d) the Baldrige model's focus on management by fact aided organizational accountability and decision making, (e) enculturation of the Baldrige framework progresses through three distinct levels, and (f) the results of analyzing several metrics at the various institutions suggested evidence of improvement in some areas of student performance, stakeholder satisfaction, and financial position.