Towards business excellence. The case of Poland

Abstract

The paper reports the advance of Polish companies in business excellence initiatives. It indicates how these activities influence their performance. EFQM Excellence Model indicators are used as the evaluation criteria for the study. The performance variable is introduced to ensure the calculation of correlations between EFQM model indicators and performance results. The data are next estimated as a structural equation model by partial least squares using SmartPLS software (Ringle, Wende, Will, 2005). That estimation is conducted on the model of the Danish Business Excellence Index methodology (Kristensen, Juhl, Eskildsen, 2001a). The correlations and estimation results are used to discuss the condition of Polish companies and to point out the efforts that should be made for further development. The presented data were collected by means of a structured questionnaire which was sent to companies in the year 2005. The examined sample consisted of 79 companies coming from different areas of Poland representing 19 sectors. It appears from the data that the efforts of Polish companies undertaken in most areas of self-assessment according to the EFQM model do provide them with economic value. Nevertheless, people, people results and customers’ results are the areas which need the improvements to be made. At the same time they can be treated as potential for future growth.