During the late 1980s considerable emphasis was placed on using audit and benchmarking frameworks to help firms review their performance in the area of total quality management. These include the European Foundation for Quality management (EFQM) model which was later adopted as the Business Excellence model. They derived in large measure form Japanese approaches such as the Deming Prize which provided a measurable framework within which firms could assess themselves and be judged by trained external assessors. The purpose of these was less to win the prizes (though that had some publicity value) than to help identify where there were strengths and weaknesses in the organisation and how they could be developed.
In the USA a popular version of this approach was established by the US Congress in 1987, named after a former Secretary of Commerce, Malcolm Baldrige. The award assesses firms on seven categories:
| potential points | |
| Leadership | 90 |
| Information and analysis | 75 |
| Strategic planning | 55 |
| Human resource development and management | 140 |
| Process management | 140 |
| Business results | 250 |
| Customer focus and satisfaction | 250 |
| total potential points score | 1000 |
These categories have sub-divisions and assessors are trained to ensure some comparability between organisations of different sizes and sectors. A good review of the process is given in a paper by David Garvin in the Harvard Business Review — 'How the Baldrige award really works', November/December, pp 80-93, 1991.
The award was extensively used during the 1990s but has become less popular — not least because one winner (the Wallace Company) won in 1991 and went bankrupt a few years later!