Developing versus developed companies in Business Excellence initiatives

The paper reports the advance of Polish companies in Business Excellence initiatives. It indicates how these activities influence their performance. EFQM Excellence Model indicators are used as the evaluation criteria for the study. The performance variable is introduced to ensure the calculation of correlations between EFQM model indicators and performance results. The data are next estimated as a structural equation model by partial least squares using SmartPLS software (Ringle et al., 2005). That estimation is conducted on the model of the Danish Business Excellence Index methodology (Kristensen et al., 2001a). The correlations and estimation results are used to discuss the condition of Polish companies and to point out the efforts that should be made for further development. Information about actual financial results for the companies is introduced and the paper discusses the possibility of using results from the Business Excellence Model as a proxy for actual financial results in Poland. Data and results from a similar study done in Denmark are also described; thus, a comparison between developing Polish companies and developed Danish ones is included. Poland and Denmark are used as cases of, respectively, developing and developed European countries.