Validating Key Results Linkages in the Baldrige Performance Excellence Model

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence represent a framework for high-performance management systems. Although the criteria have evolved based on the collective wisdom of quality experts and management practitioners throughout the United States, little empirical research has been performed to validate the criteria and its core concepts and values. One of the key linkages in the criteria is the relationship between external results and internal performance metrics, which reflect the processes and management systems that drive results in an organization. The authors use a large empirical data set to explore these linkages, and apply canonical correlation to uncover significant relationships between variables, such as between employee satisfaction and process performance, and between work system improvement and productivity. These results: 1) validate some of the key linkages; 2) support long-standing beliefs and anecdotal evidence by practitioners of the relationships among endogenous and exogenous results for business performance; and 3) lend credibility to causal hypotheses that improving internal management practices leads to improvements in external results. As such, they provide new evidence of the validity of the Baldrige model and its examination/self-assessment process that seeks to validate strong business results as an outcome of high-performance management practices.