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Business excellence for SMEs: motives, obstacles, and size-related adaptations

Several national European Foundation for Quality Management partner organisations have launched an initiative to develop an entry-level approach to business excellence (BE) specifically targeted to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Eleven SMEs were taking part in a first pilot project in Austria. A longitudinal qualitative research design including multiple methods (observation, written surveys, and telephone surveys) was used to study motives, obstacles, and implementation results of the SMEs that participated in this project. This exploratory study reveals that in addition to active (related to strategic business and market development) and passive (responding to customer and market requirements) external motives, SMEs are also strongly driven by both active (striving for operative excellence) and passive (adaptation of structures and processes to changing requirements) internal motives. The main obstacles for SMEs to adopt a BE approach relate to resource constraints, managerial and employee attitudes, and conceptual concerns. First implementation results show support for a more gradual approach to SME immersion into BE thinking and methods.