The path to continual improvement and business excellence: compliance to ISO standards versus a business excellence approach

ISO Standards provide a minimal benchmark for organisations to achieve accreditation or certification and maintain compliance to the core elements of the standard. These standards assist organisations in establishing and maintaining a quality management system. Business Excellence models are integrated collections of proven activities for how an organisation should operate to pursue excellence or world-class performance and sustainability. The focus is on the customers and internal processes to meet customer expectations. The pursuit of ISO compliance and business excellence are interrelated, synergistic and will lead to common approaches for progress and sustainability if well managed. Embracing quality assurance systems, tools of organisational excellence and benchmarking against the best international standards and practices are essential for businesses operating in a global community. The Royal College of Pathologists of Australasia Quality Assurance Programs Pty Ltd has long been a compliance-driven organisation, but more recently embraced the pursuit of business excellence by adopting the Australian Business Excellence Framework. These two approaches to quality management and continual improvement are compared and the value of incorporating both approaches is explored.