The Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) is pleased to announce the successful completion of Saad Ghafoor’s PhD Research Project. The research was part of a study titled Excellence Without Borders which was launched by COER in July 2018 and supported by the Global Excellence Model Council. Saad’s research investigated the current state of and best practices in designing business excellence frameworks/models and promoting, facilitating, awarding, supporting, and measuring business excellence on a national/regional and sectoral level.

A total of 26 countries (and 29 Business Excellence Custodians (BEC) participated in the project. BECs are organisations responsible with a country or region for designing business excellence frameworks, and for promoting their use for productivity, economic competitiveness, and societal benefits. Some countries had more than one BEC participating in the project such as the Dubai Government Excellence Program, Sheikh Khalifa Excellence Award, and the Dubai Economy Department in the United Arab Emirates.

Three academic peer-reviewed journal papers have already been published from the research:

1. Ghafoor, S., Grigg, N.P. and Mann, R. (2021), “An investigation of designing, developing and modifying business excellence frameworks”, Measuring Business Excellence, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/MBE-10-2020-0137
2. Saad Ghafoor, Robin Stephen Mann & Nigel Grigg (2021) The strengths and opportunities for improvement of the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program, Quality Management Journal, 28:3, 128-144, DOI: 10.1080/10686967.2021.1920867
3. Saad Ghafoor, Nigel P. Grigg, Sanjay Mathrani & Robin Mann (2020) A bibliometric and thematic review of business excellence journal papers from 1990 to 2020, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, DOI: 10.1080/14783363.2020.1847638

Another four journal papers are in the process of publication. It is envisaged that the research findings will lead to an improved understanding of business excellence and help BECs to raise the profile and use of business excellence worldwide.
Information on undertaking a PhD at the Centre for Organisational Excellence Research, Massey University, New Zealand, is available here: PhD Applicants – COER.