Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award winners: A quantitative analysis between strategic planning and human resource variables

Abstract The United States Congress in 1987 voted to enact the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) with the goal of encouraging U.S. businesses and other types of organizations to approach and deploy effective quality processes in the delivery of their products and services. The MBNQA provides a framework of internal assessment for companies to use in their planning and implementation of quality initiatives. Through this internal assessment process, company leadership gains a better understanding of the alignments/linkages within its operations to modify its processes for meeting or exceeding customer expectations and requirements. The purpose of the research is to examine the extent of the alignment between strategic planning processes and human resource processes. Eleven manufacturing companies were selected for a site visit. Each of these eleven companies represents a different industry sector, geographical location, and organizational size. A survey, documents search, and personal interviews were used to collect the data. The observations of the alignment between the two construct categories show mixed results and are dependent upon the specific statistical analysis used. Therefore, research questions R1 and R2 are not confirmed.