ORIGINAL ARTICLE An exploratory study of common issues and key differences between the European Foundation for Quality Management and the United Arab Emirates Public Sector Excellence Model: public sector organisation results Ola Khalid AlZawati 1,3 • Imad Alsyouf 1,2 • Hamdi Bashir 1,2 Received: 7 December 2019 / Revised: 4 February 2020 / Published online: 27 February 2020 Ó The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden 2020 Abstract Public sector organisations are increasingly implementing excellence models (EM) to improve their processes and services efficiently and to obtain the com- petitive advantage globally in terms of cost and quality. This paper seeks to present a comparative analysis of frameworks of European Foundation for Quality Manage- ment excellence model and a new government excellence model; namely, 4th G developed in United Arab Emirates. It also identifies their common issues and differences in terms of core values, criteria, weights’ distribution, assessment methodologies and achievement of perceived benefits to propose suggestions for proper implementation of the government excellence model. Moreover, a com- prehensive literature review formed the basis of a survey questionnaire and responses from about 42 specialists, in both models, have been used for empirical analyses. The data was analysed using a sign test to test the stated hypothesis. The results suggested that there is no signifi- cant difference between the core values of both models while the analysis signifies that a difference exists between the overall criteria of both models, the weights’ distribution and the assessment methods. Overall, the present work concludes that, the perceived benefits expected from the new model have been tangible. Findings of the research are valuable for public sector organisations currently adopting the 4th G, elucidating that excellence models must not be static and must evolve as organisations grow. Keywords Excellence models Á Comparison Á Public sector Á 4th G government excellence model Á Dubai government Á EFQM 1 Introduction Considerable research has been done to investigate the reasons behind an organisation’s strife for excellence. Most have agreed that factors like economic globalisation, open markets, increasing customer demands, and competitors’ pressure have made excellent organisational performance essential to the continuation and the prosperity of any business in a progressively turbulent and hostile economic environment (Dewangan et al. 2015; Ferdowsian 2016; Androniceanu 2017; Toma and Naruo 2017). It has been acknowledged that organisations may achieve excellence if adopted as a management philosophy, values, approaches and criteria to help produce desired results overall on a short, medium as well as long term for a sustainable development in future (Sampaio et al. 2012). It has been reported by many researchers that these three models; the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM) model in Europe, Malcom Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) in USA and the Deming Prize in Japan, & Ola Khalid AlZawati u15105721@sharjah.ac.ae Imad Alsyouf ialsyouf@sharjah.ac.ae Hamdi Bashir hbashir@sharjah.ac.ae 1 Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 2 Sustainable Engineering Asset Management (SEAM) Research Group, University of Sharjah, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates 3 Dubai, United Arab Emirates 123 Int J Syst Assur Eng Manag (December 2020) 11(6):1156–1169 https://doi.org/10.1007/s13198-020-00965-0