Eight years ago, the production management department ofthe WHU launched the industry competition ,Best Factory / Industrial Excellence Award'' jointly with the media partner Wirtschaftswoche in Germany. Two years earlier, the competition had been initiated successfully by INSEAD faculty in France. Over the years, the joint research team experienced first-hand that application of Management Quality was a key driver ofcontinuous improvement along the firm''s core business proc esses. Moreover, those companies that exhibited the highest improvement rates achieved mostly the best business results (compared to their industry bench marks). Andreas Enders accompanied us for five rounds of the competition as program manager for the German competition. His contributions - among others the launch ofour web site www. beste-fabrik. de - are greatly acknowledged by the academic advisory team. The fmdings ofthe industry competition greatly influenced this thesis on Man agement Competence. Initially, the main research question though was to provide a theoretic foundation and an empirical test for the seven-factor Management Quality model (as defined in our recent book on Industrial Excellence). Manage ment Quality consists of strategy formulation and deployment combined with delegation of tasks to workers and their participation. In addition, measurement, integration, communication and training complement the main levers. While there exist numerous studies on superior business performance and key success factors, there are few sound empirical studies available to date on operational performance and sustained business success.
