Self-Assessment Using a Business Excellence Model: an empirical study on Brazilian SMEs

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to identify the business excellence status of a set of Brazilian SMEs and to propose a specific self-assessment framework, which could be used by small and medium enterprises.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a model for self-assessment based on eight criteria for business excellence, namely leadership; strategy and planning; customers; society; information and knowledge; people; processes; and results. The self-assessment system e-Meg, provided by the National Quality Foundation (FNQ), was applied for collecting data from 76 Brazilian SMEs. The data was used for a factorial analysis to reduce the number of criteria for self-assessment in SMEs.
Findings – This work identified that the SMEs are far from what could be considered the business excellence. In all criteria the surveyed organizations analyzed showed underperformance. But it was realized that, despite being far from the best practices, companies are willing to begin a process of improvement towards business excellence. For this reason, a specific model for self-assessment is proposed.
Practical implications – The model developed for business excellence self-assessment can be used by small and medium enterprises to evaluate their performance and excellence periodically.
Originality/value – The model developed for business excellence can contribute significantly to existing literature on business excellence. Further research can help in refining the criteria to this self-assessment framework to make the model a holistic one.

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Business Excellence, Self-assessment, Small- to Medium-Sized Enterprise, SME.