Strategic Planning -- Making Business Strategies AND Ensuring Their Proper Implementation. Literature Review Example

Abstract

Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act originated so as to introduce the concept of quality improvement and management amongst American businesses. Based on roughly seven postulates also known as the Baldrige Principles, companies can bring about a total quality improvement. Some of the major postulates are: visionary leadership, customer-oriented policies, valuing the stakeholders (especially the employees), introducing innovation etc. Meant to work for all businesses, especially healthcare, small and manufacturing based businesses -- the incentive to practice these principles is in the form of the Baldrige Awards. These also bring recognition for the organisation and hence, better work opportunities and clientele.
The origin of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act lie in the year 1980, when the then President of America, Ronal Reagan, signed the above act to initiate the businesses into a process of quality improvement. With the main goal being improvement of productivity and quality of the business, the Act and its guiding principles became a benchmark to strive by. The Baldrige Act provides quality improvement guidelines and criteria to the organisations, while also helping these organisations in evaluating their improvement efforts (Garvin, 1991). The Baldrige Act covers three major business categories -- manufacturing, small businesses and service.
The organisations willing to walk through the path as prescribed by the Baldrige Act in the form of Baldrige principles need to follow the above mentioned postulates (Grizzel & Crouch, 2007).
Leadership -- Baldrige principles propagate a strong organisational leadership, which can guide and steer all the employees and company values towards betterment.

Customer focus -- With keeping an eye on the market demands, building a business around the customer requirements, while ensuring string customer relationships.

Procuring & Analyzing Data -- Collecting the performance data of the organisation and analyzing it by way of Baldrige requirements.

Building Strong Human Resource values -- Building HR values which focus on the employees (such as employee training, education and job design) and involving them into the process of decision-making.

Process Management -- examining and improving the management activities such as product delivery, supplier partnerships etc.

Improving Business Results -- Considered to be the most important aspect of any business, keeping a focus on this major index, that is, customer satisfaction, product performance and finances, forms the last of the principles of Baldrige Act.
For an organisation to begin with the process of implementing the Baldrige Principles, it is extremely important that all stakeholders be involved in the process. The employees, suppliers and customers -- all will become a part of the overhauling or improvement process. Even if one of the stakeholders is left unconsidered, the implementation of the Baldrige principles will not be complete. Secondly, all stakeholders must acknowledge the importance of implementing Baldrige principles for overall quality improvement. This will help resolve any conflict that the process of change may bring along. Another major process which needs to be initiated during the time of implementation of the improvement program is "feedback". Any set-backs or conflicts, even redundant processes may be resolved by way of collecting feedbacks from all stakeholders. In fact, the very basis of bringing about change is by beginning to focus on the feedback that the stakeholders provide -- the way the organisation is viewed, understanding the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation, processes which require change, solutions to problems etc. Lastly, the field of business is ever growing as long as one stays updates with the latest trends and technology. For the same, keeping the employees trained and educated with the latest trends and technological advancements will provide the much needed boost, even as it will help better streamline the business processes. All of the above mentioned steps will help in the establishment of a better platform where the Baldrige principles are well adopted and implemented, providing the organisation an edge over its competitors, while achieving total efficiency as well.

References

Garvin, D.A. (1991). How the Baldrige Award Really Works. Harvard Business Review, 11. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/1991/11/how-the-baldrige-award-really-works
Grizzel, P. & Crouch, L. (2007). The Nine Principles – A Roadmap for the Baldrige Criteria. Studer Group. Retrieved from http://corevaluespartners.com/2007/10/10/the-nine-principles-a-roadmap-for-the-baldrige-criteria/