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Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award

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The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award is given by the United States National Institute of Standards and Technology. It was established by the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Improvement Act of 1987 - Public Law 100-107 and named for Malcolm Baldrige, who served as United States Secretary of Commerce during the Reagan administration from 1981 until his 1987 death in a rodeo accident. The program aims to reward quality in the business, health care, education, and nonprofit sectors and was inspired by the ideas of Total Quality Management or TQM. This is the only quality award that is actually awarded by the President of the United States. This award and the Ron Brown Award are the two U.S. presidential awards given to corporations.


The original stated purpose of the award were to

  • promote quality awareness
  • recognizing quality achievements of the US companies
  • publicise successful quality strategies

The current award criteria are stated to have three important roles in strengthening US competitiveness:

  • To help improve organizational performance practices, capabilities and results
  • To facilitate communication and sharing of the best practice information among US organizations of all types
  • To serve as a working tool for understanding and managing performance and for guiding planning and opportunities for learning

The criteria are designed to help organizations use an aligned approach to organizational performance management that results in:

  • Delivery of ever-improving value to customers, contributing to market success
  • Improvement in overall organizational effectiveness and capabilities
  • Organizational and personal learning

The seven categories of the criteria are:

  1. Leadership
  2. Strategic Planning
  3. Customer & Market Focus
  4. Measurement, Analysis and Knowledge Management
  5. Workforce Focus
  6. Process Management
  7. Results

The basic criteria for the award are found at the Baldrige Program Web Site where they provide free downloads as follows:

Past winners

Baldrige National Quality Program (BNQP) Resources

2006 Case Study - Arroyo Fresco A Baldrige case study packet is composed of the tools used to train Baldrige Examiners and of the Examiners’ working documents in the evaluation process. As such, it demonstrates the Baldrige Award application and evaluation processes and provides insight into and understanding of the Criteria on which evaluations are based. The case study packet is a useful tool that includes information relating to scoring, Criteria responses, and examination processes, as well as illustrating the format for an application.

Additional case studies can be found in the Quality Reference Archive , and additional resources for members of the Board of Examiners can be found in the 2006 Virtual Examiner Handbook.

Getting Started Learn more about the benefits of self-assessment and the many tools, approaches, and resources available to help you get started using the Baldrige Criteria. You can use these tools and approaches to convince others in your organization of the value of conducting a Baldrige self-assessment.

Are We Making Progress? Deploying your organization's strategy can be much more difficult than developing it. This easy-to-use questionnaire can help you assess how your organization is performing and learn what can be improved. Based on the Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence, the questionnaire will help you focus your improvement and communication efforts on areas needing the most attention from the perspective of your employees.

In 2002 and 2003, 228 Baldrige Examiners used the Are We Making Progress? questionnaire to assess the progress being made by their own organizations. The results posted here can be used as valuable comparative data for any organization to determine how it compares to others in determining progress in performance excellence. These results constitute a national database that can reveal how your employees’ perceptions compare with the perceptions of other organizations in all sectors—business, education, health care, and nonprofit—and can help your organization set priorities for improvement.

Are We Making Progress as Leaders? Are We Making Progress as Leaders?—the companion piece to Are We Making Progress?— is a questionnaire specifically designed for senior leadership teams in organizations dedicated to performance excellence. (The companion piece, Are We Making Progress?, is suitable for distribution to your employees, managers, and supervisors.)

Notable examniers: Paul Steel, Steven Hoisington, Bob Osteroff, John Vinyard, John Latham, Lori Kirkland, Doug Sears

  • NIST Page for Baldrige Award
  • NetworkforExcellence.org Home of the Alliance for Performance Excellence, a network of state, local, and international Baldrige based organizations
  • Texas Nameplate Company is the first Small Business to receive the Malcolm Baldrige Award, not once, but twice: in 1998 and 2004. Their site provides links to current [1] materials.
  • The Baldrige Blog is the first blog dedicated to all matters related to the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, related State and Local Baldrige-based programs, and all other quality and performance excellence programs throughout the world.
  • eBaldrige is the first Web site dedicated to provide, among other things, expert advice and special counsel to help CEOs embed the Baldrige Criteria into the way organizations conduct their business.
  • The New Hotrod Video shows how a small business embedded the Baldrige Criteria electronically. Very cool, short video!
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