Organizational quality in higher education: An examination of the Baldrige framework in the university work environment.

Abstract

Although the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) has been piloted in educational organizations, little research has been conducted to empirically examine the MBNQA framework in higher educational organizations. The purpose of this study was to test the major predictive relationships of the MBNQA framework in the non-instructional university work environment. Seven dimensions of organizational quality are identified in the MBNQA: leadership, information analysis, strategic planning, human resource management, process management, performance results, and customer focus. The predictive relationships between these dimensions were analyzed based on a survey of over 10,000 executive, professional, administrative, office, technical, and maintenance employees at a major research university. Path analysis was used to measure the strengths of the relationships among the dimensions. Structural equation modeling (LISREL) was used to determine whether the overall predictive relationships asserted by the Baldrige framework were plausible. The leadership dimension was found to have a strong effect on the four system dimensions (information utilization, strategic planning, human resource management, and process management). Surprisingly, the leadership dimension had almost no direct effect on the outcome dimensions (performance results and customer focus). The human resource management dimension had a strong effect on the performance results outcome dimension, while the strategic planning dimension had a strong effect on the customer focus outcome dimension. Only the process management dimension had a strong effect on both outcome dimensions. The study suggests that institutional leaders interested in improving performance and customer focus should emphasize organizational work process improvements. The plausibility of the overall Baldrige framework was rejected based on a low goodness-of-fit statistic produced by the structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis. The study offers an alternative conceptual framework of organizational quality based on an exploratory SEM analysis.