New perspective for business excellence in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environment

What is it about?

Aspiring business excellence is a journey that involves many challenges, yet it brings many benefits for the company. As a concept it emerged from the quality knowledge area and is inherently associated with a relatively stable business environment, the journey becomes more challenged under a high Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment. There is enormous literature about different approaches to achieve business excellence, however, there is a lack of understanding of the impact of today's high VUCA on achieving excellence compounded with a lack of understanding on how to manage each element of the VUCA conditions themselves. The overall research objective was to examine how companies can achieve business excellence in the modern VUCA environment. A new business concept was developed in this research denoted as 'BEVUCA' (pronounced as BE-VU-CA) which stands for 'Business Excellence in a Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous' environment. The research methodology incorporated a systematic literature review for three knowledge areas namely: VUCA, business excellence and the integration between quality management and risk management. The later knowledge area was examined because it is believed that the integration can help to achieve BEVUCA, as business excellence came from a quality background and VUCA is best understood by using risk management thinking.

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Why is it important?

The research achieved three results; firstly, it provided a definition of the new business concept; secondly, the systematic literature review identified 18 critical success factors to manage and excel under high VUCA time. These success factors are gathered into four groups namely: 'Vision', 'Understanding', 'Clarity' and 'Agility'. Finally, the research included developing a conceptual framework for integrating quality management and risk management thinking so as to achieve BEVUCA.

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