Quality Award and Certifications: A Case of Excellence

Introduction

This case demonstrates the structure of a national quality award known as Dubai Quality award. With the history of 22 years, the award has encouraged organizations in UAE to improve their business performance. The initiative, after this success, has now gone global and invites multinational organizations to participate and apply for the award. Award recognizes organization at three stages with an ‘appreciation award, the award itself and ‘gold’ category award at a highest level. Winning organizations, thus have lauded the benefits and cite that alongside quality improvements, these awards have also helped many different improvements within the organizations. The case then illustrates the innovation practices relating to strategy and highlights the critical success factors for a successful implementation of a quality award model. The Dubai Quality Award is organized by the Department of Economic Development of Dubai (DED). Under the patronage of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashed Al Maktoum, Ruler of Dubai and current Vice President and Prime Minister of UAE, the Dubai quality award was initiated in 1994 based on the concepts of EFQM Model. At first it was constructed on the fundamentals of US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award framework, but later in 1999 it was remodeled according to European based EFQM model that continues till date (Thawani, 2014). It comprises of nine criteria separated into enablers and results. These nine enablers and results criteria of DQA are as follows:

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  Leadership (10%)

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  Strategy (10%)

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  People (10%)

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  Partnership and Resources (10%)

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  Processes, products and services (10%)

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  Customer Results (15%)

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  People Results (10%)

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  Society Results (10%)

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  Business Results (15%).

The nine criteria of the model function as outright framework to such an extent that any insufficiency in one criterion will influence the score of others. The model focuses on the whole system and is non-prescriptive in nature to recognize the fact that there might be more than one approach for accomplishing excellence. The model ensures that all the initiatives developed by the organization are streamlined in one direction of achieving sustained high performance (Dubaided.ae, 2017). The DQA Excellence Award is presented to those organizations that show constant commitment in pursuing best practices within their industry and demonstrate sustained continuous improvement. Organizations from nearly 11 business sectors like service, infrastructure, manufacturing, finance, tourism & hospitality, healthcare, media communication and education are known to be an active applicant of this framework (Thawani, 2014).

There are three different categories of recognition within DQA. They are as listed below:

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  The Dubai Quality Award Gold (GOLD) presented to organizations from all sectors of the economy that have been previous winners of the Dubai Quality Award (DQA).

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  The Dubai Quality Award (DQA) presented to enterprises in different sectors of the economy, such as manufacturing, services, tourism, construction, finance, professional, and trade. Winners may apply for the Gold category three years from the date of receiving their feedback report.

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  The Dubai Quality Appreciation Programme (DQAP) is presented to winners as appreciation for quality effort and in acknowledging the work on an organization’s journey for excellence.

These categories of award recognition reflect the maturity of an organization and therefore can be utilized to assess the journey of the organization towards business excellence. The Award Office in consultation with the jury members determines the Cut off scores for the assessment. As soon as an organization applies for the award program, a team of qualified assessors, evaluate the system, performance and provide scores as per the criteria requirements (Thawani, 2014).