MBNQA is an American award for American organizations. The criteria framework of the award
is quite comprehensive and it comprises most of the basic tenets of TQM. For this reason,
MBNQA has been a ‘role model’ in developing national quality awards in many other countries.
One such country is Malaysia, which launched the ‘Prime Minister’s Quality Award’ (PMQA) in
1990. It is regarded as the most prestigious award in business in Malaysia. It is interesting to note
that the criteria framework for PMQA is very similar to that for MBNQA. Although PMQA was
launched in 1990, Malaysia is yet to start the national quality award in the education sector. In
Malaysia, it is widely known that the Federal Government intends to make the country a regional
center of educational excellence. In line with this objective, it will be highly fitting that the
government takes the initiative to launch a national quality award for the education sector. If the
government makes the decision to launch the award and adopts the MBNQA criteria framework,
the next task for the government (or appropriate body from within the government) is to modify
the weights assigned to the criteria set. In the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM) literature,
it is well known that assigning weights to the criteria set is a ‘local phenomenon’. This means that
the weights will be different for different decision makers. This is logical and a matter of common
sense. In view of this, we can confidently state that the MBNQA criteria weights will not be the
same in the Malaysian setting. The present work has been carried out to obtain weights for the
MBNQA criteria in education in the Malaysian context.