1. What is the Malcolm Baldrige Award?
The Malcolm Baldrige is a national the most expected and desirable award for companies and organizations which have demonstrated the innovations in management, the highest performance level, the evidence of the clear and strong strategy, the involvement in the social media, well-organized the total workload and the company’s system of work in general. The company should be competitive in te market and show its main advantages over the others. There should be indicated the way of avoiding risks by the company. There are specific criteria of excellence for each of the following groups – health care, education and general criteria, which was set for the small businesses, manufacturing, governmental and non-profit organizations and also for companies, providing services. This award increases the competitiveness level of the American companies.
2. Why is the Baldrige Award important to organizations?
First of all, this award is highly honorable, because it is the national one. While trying to correspond the Baldrige Criteria the companies improve their overall performance, increase the number of the successful achievements, evaluate their core competitiveness. The best practices are widely accessible after the competition. The criteria help to choose the right strategy of the company and set the most appropriate direction. There are a lot of learning materials while preparing the company for the competition. Most of the word well-known programs concerning the business success and the ranging of performance level are based on these criteria.
For the quarter of the century the Malcolm Baldrige Award encouraged the wide range of the companies to become better and stronger competitors in the market in accordance with its criteria, which were set as a part of competition entrance.
3. How does the Baldrige Award fit with Sustainability?
There is launched a sustainable program concerning manufacturing, which aims to improve the efficiency of energy usage and consuming of other not-renewable sources, reducing of wastes, the recycling of materials. New methodologies are integrated and the world best practices are implemented into this project. The program concerns the providing of the full manufacturing cycle, integration of international standards of sustainable models. The manufacturing should be not high level of energy-consuming, the infrastructure should be modern and highly-integrated into the whole system as a united mechanism, the workload should be efficient in order to enable the high level of productivity. The whole process must be optimized in order to gain best possible results and fully use the capacities. There are the main principles of the sustainable program. Special standards required were also set.
4. How does the Baldrige Award fit with other Strategic Management?
The identifying of the company’s strategy is one of the most powerful criteria of the Baldrige Award, therefore, the strategic management is essential enough. There is also mentioned , that growth in innovations must be also provided, which is impossible organize without thoughtful strategic plan. The last mention purpose is a responsibility of the Strategic Management of the company- therefore if is highly connected with the Baldrige Award. One of the further criteria is social-media involvement, which is a new tendency between the companies. The special implementation strategy is needed for increasing of effectiveness.
Al things considered, the Baldrige Award is prestigious national award for the organizations, which has specially criteria, that force the company to improve and develop. Trying to meet the requirements, the companies become closer to the Sustainability concerns and implement efficient strategies, designed specially for participation in the competition for the Baldrige Award.