In recent years, the federally sponsored Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award has turned into the Rodney Dangerfield of the quality world. The Baldrige, it seems--much like the comedic persona created by stand-up comic Dangerfield--just "don't get no respect." Or certainly not the respect that it deserves as the nation's top quality award.
While the general business press devotes plenty of ink to quality techniques such as Six Sigma and its practitioners, the Baldrige Award and its winners receive little substantive coverage. In recent years, some Baldrige critics have claimed that the award process creates more paperwork than quality improvements, or that it places too little--or too much--emphasis on business results. As evidence of the Award's waning import, some point to the decline in the number of Baldrige entrants since its peak years in the early 1990s.