Research reveals a fundamental challenge organizations face when pursuing excellence: what counts as excellent depends entirely on who’s doing the counting. A comprehensive analysis of research excellence frameworks found that excellence is described by experts as “hard to define,” “contextual,” and critically, “actor-dependent” (Tijssen & Kraemer-Mbula, 2018). This isn’t a semantic quibble. When excellence becomes a moving target shaped by different stakeholders’ perspectives, organizations risk working toward fundamentally incompatible goals—a problem with measurable consequences.
The evidence shows that excellence isn’t a single destination we all march toward together. It’s a constellation of context-specific standards that shift depending on who’s evaluating performance and what they value most. Understanding this reality—and learning to work within it—separates organizations that struggle with alignment from those that achieve sustainable results.
What Research Tells Us About the Many Faces of Excellence
The multidimensional nature of excellence isn’t theoretical. Studies examining organizational performance reveal that what constitutes “excellence” varies dramatically across measurement perspectives. Research published in the Journal of Management analyzed how different stakeholder groups assess organizational success, finding that performance indicators yield different results depending on whether they emphasize financial returns, operational efficiency, stakeholder satisfaction, or strategic positioning (Richard et al., 2009). Changing strategic approaches doesn’t just alter performance outcomes—it reshapes how performance itself should be measured.
This has profound implications. A finance team measuring excellence through cost efficiency may reach entirely different conclusions than a customer experience team focused on satisfaction scores—even when evaluating the same activities. Neither is wrong; they’re simply applying different, equally valid frameworks.
The Baldrige Excellence Framework, used by thousands of organizations globally, acknowledges this directly. The 2023–2024 framework emphasizes that organizations must “deliver and balance value for key stakeholders” across multiple dimensions: financial results, product and service outcomes, customer satisfaction, workforce engagement, and leadership effectiveness (NIST, 2023). Excellence, in this model, requires satisfying multiple audiences with potentially competing priorities. An organization can achieve financial excellence while failing at workforce excellence—or vice versa.
International research further illustrates this contextual variation. Analyses of African research institutions found that applying Eurocentric definitions of research excellence systematically disadvantaged institutions operating under different resource constraints and strategic priorities (Tijssen & Kraemer-Mbula, 2018). When African researchers were asked what constitutes “excellent” research, they ranked “training future generations of researchers” highest—reflecting the continent’s severe skills shortage—while Western frameworks prioritized publication metrics and citations. Neither standard is inherently superior; each reflects its own context and purpose.
Recent research on organizational performance measurement reinforces this pattern. A 2024 study examining the UK’s Research Excellence Framework found that narrowly focused, output-based measures of excellence correlated negatively with organizational diversity, while measures emphasizing research impact and environmental quality correlated positively (Hengel et al., 2024). The very act of choosing which standard to apply produces different organizational behaviors and outcomes.
Why Misaligned Standards Create Organizational Friction
The practical consequences of operating with unaligned definitions of excellence are predictable. Research on performance expectations and organizational culture found that when different parts of an organization maintain conflicting definitions of excellence, employees experience heightened stress and confusion about priorities (Smollan et al., 2024). The study revealed that subcultural differences can trigger “conflicting and confusing performance expectations” that employees struggle to reconcile.
This misalignment appears in familiar ways:
- The product team defines excellence as innovation and technical advancement, while operations defines it as stability and reliability. Both pursue excellence, yet their efforts clash because their standards contradict each other.
- Senior leaders equate excellence with growth and profitability, while middle managers equate it with retention and satisfaction. Resources are allocated according to one definition while daily decisions follow another—creating tension between stated priorities and lived reality.
- Individuals are evaluated by productivity metrics while teams are measured by collaboration and knowledge-sharing. The result: mixed signals about what “excellent” performance actually means.
Ambiguity carries measurable costs. A 2024 analysis found that organizations with unclear or contradictory performance standards experience 39% higher turnover among new employees, who report uncertainty about whether their career goals can be met (Qualtrics, 2024). When employees can’t determine what “excellent” looks like because stakeholders apply different standards, engagement drops sharply.
Building Frameworks for Navigating Multiple Standards
Organizations that successfully navigate excellence’s plural nature don’t pretend these differences don’t exist. Instead, they build explicit frameworks for making competing standards visible, negotiable, and actionable. Research on project success criteria offers guidance for how this works in practice.
Project management studies show that defining success criteria at project inception—and securing stakeholder agreement on how to weigh competing criteria—significantly improves outcomes (PMI, 2024). Successful projects distinguish between “hard criteria” (quantitative measures like budget and timeline) and “soft criteria” (qualitative measures like stakeholder satisfaction and team cohesion), then negotiate how to balance them. This doesn’t eliminate conflict; it makes it manageable.
Here’s a practical framework for navigating multiple definitions of excellence:
1. Make competing definitions explicit.
Organizations often assume a shared understanding of excellence where none exists. Research on goal alignment shows that collaboratively developing success criteria—with representatives from different stakeholder groups—creates genuine shared understanding rather than assumed consensus (Scott & Manning, 2024). Begin by asking each stakeholder group to articulate its definition of excellence for the work at hand, and document these definitions formally.
2. Identify the dimensions that matter most.
Not all dimensions carry equal weight. Research on organizational effectiveness shows that strategic context determines which performance areas deserve priority (Baldrige Excellence Framework, 2023–2024). For customer-facing initiatives, satisfaction may legitimately outweigh efficiency. For internal improvements, cost-effectiveness may take precedence. The key is to make these priorities explicit rather than letting them remain implicit—or contested midstream.
3. Create transparent trade-off mechanisms.
Effective frameworks establish clear decision rules for when standards conflict. Research on collaborative organizations found that successful teams develop “shared work approaches” that serve as playbooks for navigating such conflicts (Scott & Manning, 2024). These don’t remove the need for judgment, but they ensure decisions are made consistently and transparently.
4. Measure what matters to each stakeholder group.
Balanced measurement requires multiple perspectives. Research shows that organizations achieve better outcomes when they track metrics meaningful to different stakeholder groups rather than forcing a single metric to serve all purposes (Atkinson, 1997). The operations team needs defect rates; the customer team needs satisfaction scores; the finance team needs cost per unit. All are valid indicators of excellence in their respective domains.
5. Build mechanisms for ongoing calibration.
Excellence standards evolve as contexts change. Research on standards alignment shows that high-performing organizations regularly reassess whether current definitions still serve strategic goals (McKinsey & Company, 2024). Scheduled reviews give stakeholders a forum to renegotiate what excellence means as markets, strategies, or capabilities shift. The framework remains relevant because it’s designed to adapt.
From Confusion to Clarity: Excellence as Strategic Advantage
Organizations that master the plural nature of excellence gain a competitive edge. Recent research on operational excellence found that standout companies weren’t just adopting new technologies—they were reexamining how their businesses generate value across multiple dimensions simultaneously (McKinsey & Company, 2024). These organizations continually reviewed and reimagined their approach to excellence rather than assuming a fixed definition.
In practice, this means convening key stakeholders before launching major initiatives to define excellence from their respective perspectives. Document the definitions, identify overlaps and conflicts, and negotiate priorities. Establish decision rights for trade-offs, and build measurement systems that track progress against multiple standards rather than imposing one universal metric.
This approach takes more effort upfront, but the payoff is significant. Studies on project success criteria found that teams investing in explicit criteria definition early reduced mid-project conflicts by 40% and improved stakeholder satisfaction scores (PMI, 2024). Time spent clarifying definitions pays dividends throughout execution.
The bottom line: Excellence isn’t a destination—it’s a negotiated agreement about what matters most in a given context, for specific stakeholders, at a specific time. Organizations that make these definitions explicit and workable gain the clarity to drive results. Those that assume excellence is self-evident waste energy on unproductive conflict over standards no one ever articulated.
Effective execution depends on knowing what “excellent” looks like—and recognizing that the answer legitimately differs depending on who you ask. The advantage belongs to organizations that acknowledge this reality and build frameworks to navigate it rather than pretend it doesn’t exist.
References
Atkinson, R. (1997). A stakeholder approach to strategic performance measurement. Sloan Management Review, 38(3), 25-37.
Hengel, E., Sevilla, A., & Smith, S. (2024). Measuring research quality in a more inclusive way: Evidence from the UK Research Excellence Framework. Research Evaluation, rvae013. https://doi.org/10.1093/reseval/rvae013
McKinsey & Company. (2024). Today’s good to great: Next-generation operational excellence. McKinsey Quarterly.
National Institute of Standards and Technology. (2023). Baldrige Excellence Framework 2023-2024: Proven leadership and management practices for high performance. U.S. Department of Commerce.
Project Management Institute. (2024). Maximizing project success: What is project success? PMI Research.
Qualtrics. (2024). 2024 Employee experience trends report. Qualtrics International.
Richard, P. J., Devinney, T. M., Yip, G. S., & Johnson, G. (2009). Measuring organizational performance: Towards methodological best practice. Journal of Management, 35(3), 718-804.
Scott, B. A., & Manning, M. R. (2024). Designing the collaborative organization: A framework for how collaborative work, relationships, and behaviors generate collaborative capacity. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 58(3), 432-466.
Smollan, R. K., Bhal, K. T., & Sayers, J. (2024). The bright side and dark side of performance expectations: The role of organizational culture and the impact on employee performance and wellbeing. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 35(5), 889-920.
Tijssen, R. J., & Kraemer-Mbula, E. (2018). Research excellence in Africa: Policies, perceptions, and performance. Science and Public Policy, 45(3), 392-403.