This book is a useful resource for any government agency, national productivity organization, or non-government organization striving to promote quality, continuous improvement, and organization exellence. It is collection of speeches, three resource papers, and 12 country papers that were presented at the Symposium on Quality and Business Excellence Awards organized by the Asian Productivity Organization and hosted by the Fiji National Training Council on September 18-20, 2001 in Nadi, Fiji.
The resource papers presented an overview of the Malcolm Balridge National Quality Award, the Australian Business Excellence Award, and the European Quality Award. The country papers covered quality and business excellence awards being implemented in countries at varying stages of economic development. These countries include Fiji, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Japan, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nepal, the Philippiness, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Vietnam. Many of these award were the result of a long development process, in many cases involving the transformation of initial skepticism and apathy into enthusiastic support by both the public and private sector.