Quality criteria of The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) have
been used as a standard for organisational self-assessment and benchmarking. The threefold purpose
of this paper is: to analyse the individual weights of the MBNQA criteria for organisations of the
construction and the manufacturing industry within the GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries in
order to create a basis for self-assessment and benchmarking; to identify differences of criteria
importance between the construction and the manufacturing industry (external alignment) in order
to identify challenging areas on TQM when two organisations from the respective industries
collaborate; and to compare the perspectives of project managers with those of quality management
representatives (internal alignment) in order to identify challenging areas on an organisation’s TQM
caused by not aligned or contradicting perspectives.
Design/methodology/approach – Questionnaire based in-depth interviews of GCC project