Why was the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award established?
In the early and mid-1980s, many industry and government leaders saw that a renewed emphasis on quality was no longer an option but rather a necessity for American companies doing business in an ever-expanding and more demanding competitive world market. The Baldrige Award was established to promote the awareness of performance excellence as an important element in competitiveness and was envisioned as a standard of excellence that would help U.S. companies achieve world-class quality. From the outset, Congress anticipated how applicable the Baldrige concepts would be for organizations beyond the business sector, and it since has expanded the award to include the education, health care, and nonprofit (including government) sectors.
