January 3rd, 2019
By Nurshamimi Sabli, Nurul Fatma Aziz @ Awang, and Rohayu Yusop
Anugerah Kualiti Naib Canselor (AKNC) or the Vice Chancellor’s Quality Award has been introduced for more than two decades since 1996 as a recognition from the Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)’s Vice-Chancellor with respect to the achievement of world-class standards of performance excellence.
Why World-class Standards?
UiTM through the Institute of Quality and Knowledge Advancement (InQKA) has been adopting the Malcolm Baldrige Excellence Framework for assessing the performance excellence of each of the UiTM’s Pusat Tanggungjawab (PTJs) or Responsibility Centres (RCs)[1]. This framework has been used by thousands of organizations in the United States (U.S.) in assessing their performance improvement in order to sustain in the increasingly competitive business environment. In fact, the Malcolm Baldrige criteria are one of the main elements assessed in the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, the highest level of national recognition for performance excellence in the U.S (Eastman, 2017). Figure 1 below shows the 7 Baldrige criteria for performance excellence:
Figure 1: 7 Baldrige Criteria for Performance Excellence
Source: Eastman (2017)
As can be seen in Figure 1, there are seven Criteria for Performance Excellence, which are explained briefly below:
- Leadership: How upper or top management leads the organization, and how the organization leads within the community.
- Strategic Planning: How the organization establishes and plans to implement strategic directions. Strategic initiatives will then be executed to achieve the strategic objectives.
- Customers: How the organization creates a strong and long-lasting relationship with customers and how customers feel benefited by the organization.
- Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management: How the organization uses data to support key processes and manage performance. For these criteria, key performance indicators (KPI) are highlighted to direct the achievement of each business results.
- Workforce/ Human Resource: How the organization empowers and involves its workforce.
- Operations: How the organization designs, manages and improves key processes. This criteria focuses on the various operation model being used such as plan, do, check and action (PDCA) model.
- Results: How the organization performs in terms of customer satisfaction, finances, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operations, governance, and social responsibility, and how the organization compares to its competitors. The attainment of results must also be in line with the KPI set in the fourth criteria above.
AKNC: A Tool to Promote Excellence Practices
While the AKNC seems to be a good initiative in promoting performance excellence within the university, the question arises as to whether the report truly reflects the practices implemented by the reporting RCs. In other words, has the report been ‘window dressed’ to create a misleading impression on the reporting RC?
There is somewhat an issue of misunderstanding on the need for preparing AKNC report especially from the view of AKNC writers or authors. They might think that the most important thing to report is good results and excellent achievements. Without good results to be reported, some of them may think that the AKNC report preparation is unnecessary and a waste of time, considering many other routine tasks to be done.
A fantastic result without proper planning and execution is considered as luck and not a good practice. Ideally, the AKNC report should capture the reality of the RC’s practices, be it excellent or the opposite. Each RC should first focus on achieving performance excellence by closely following the excellent practice guidelines outlined by InQKA. For example, each RC should instill the element of continuous improvement in its daily operation aiming at performance excellence. Once excellence is embedded in the RC’s works culture, then only AKNC reporting makes sense. That is, the AKNC report should act as a tool not only to assess the RC’s current performance but also to identify the areas requiring further improvements.
A closer look at the rubric assessments for processes (the first through sixth criteria), and results (the seventh criterion) suggests they are potentially helpful in helping the organizations to improve performance. Basically, the rubrics guide the organizations to have a target, execute the plan, check and revise the action that was not meeting the target. Since the rubrics have a different mark for different actions and achievements, it urges the organizations to have a strategic plan on how to achieve the highest marks. To obtain the highest marks for each criterion, the organizations need to upgrade their actions and improve their performances.
Particularly, the rubric assessment for processes is Approach, Deployment, Learning, and Integration known as ADLI while the rubric assessment for results is Level, Trend, Comparison and Importance (abbreviated LeTCI). These rubric assessments are depicted in Figures 2 and 3 below.
Figure 2: Assessment Rubric for Processes
Figure 3: Assessment Rubric for Results
Based on the ADLI rubric for processes, “I” stands for integration. This element represents the integration of RC’s good practices whether internally or externally, locally or internationally. Hence, the process of learning, practice and work culture might be improved through this benchmarking activity.
Same goes to the LeTCI rubric for results, “Le” stands for the level of RC’s current year achievements. The highest score will be given for achievements that exceed the target. If each organization knows what they need to achieve, they can plan from the beginning to meet or exceed the target. “T” represents the trend of achievements for at least three years. RC will be awarded ‘best in class’ if it can show a positive trend for three consecutive years. This will assist each people of the organization to gauge whether they are performing better or not from time to time. Meanwhile “C” stands for comparison of RC’s achievements between other RCs, whether within UiTM, among local universities in Malaysia or even international educational institutions. This will help to analyze and conduct a post-mortem for current year achievements.
AKNC should be seen by all as the highest award from the Vice Chancellor of UiTM, in recognition for best practices of the respective RCs. The success of the respective RCs can be an inspiration to other RCs to adopt similar exercises or even better practices in the future. It is undeniable that AKNC reporting requires a high commitment from all members of each RC especially the authors. However, if an organization put AKNC as part of its KPI to be achieved, it will be considered as crucial and will motivate the members to work towards it.
Should AKNC Remain to be an Annual Requirement for Each RC in UiTM?
As discussed earlier, AKNC is a practice developed from a widely used international framework and can be a tool to help the organizations to achieve excellent practices. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that AKNC should be continued from year to year.
The provision of attractive incentives might be necessary to encourage voluntary involvement among academic staff in the AKNC reporting. For example, the contribution of staff involved in reporting the AKNC may be recognized in the UiTM’s MYRA (Malaysian Research Assessment Instrument) as a publication of the technical report or through the Anugerah Perkhidmatan Cemerlang (APC) or Excellence Service Award.
Perhaps, the preparation of AKNC report can be made more efficient through a digital platform, in line with the Industrial Revolution (IR) 4.0. The recent requirement by InQKA that RCs employ both hardcopy and softcopy formats in the AKNC reporting (i.e. Compact Disc and E-book) seems a good strategy. It is hoped that the AKNC reports can be accessed online and easily shared among the reporting RCs.
