This document represents the abstract of our published paper for the research in which we examined how companies can achieve business excellence in a highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environment. The online version is available for limited download at http://www.emeraldinsight.com/eprint/MEZACUSHGKBIAPZMKA8N/full.

1. Business excellence in a volatile,
uncertain, complex and
ambiguous environment
(BEVUCA)
Ayat Saleh and Richard Watson
Warwick Manufacturing Group, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine how companies can achieve business excellence in a
highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. Within the literature about business
excellence, there is a lack of understanding of the impact of today’s high VUCA on achieving business
excellence. A new business concept, business excellence in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous
environment (BEVUCA), will be illustrated so as to bridge this gap by considering the overall VUCA influence
and the influences of each specific term individually.
Design/methodology/approach – The research incorporated a systematic literature review for three
knowledge areas, namely: VUCA, business excellence and the management integration of quality and risk. The
later knowledge area was reviewed because such diverse management thinking can help to achieve BEVUCA.
Findings – The research provided a definition for a new business concept and the systematic literature
review identified 18 critical success factors so as to manage and excel under a high VUCA business
environment. Finally a conceptual framework was developed for integrating quality management and risk
management thinking so as to achieve BEVUCA.
Originality/value – BEVUCA can be used to close the current gap in the body of literature by providing a
link between VUCA and business excellence, and hence advancing the discussion in these areas. Additionally,
the BEVUCA conceptual framework can be used as guidance in integrating quality management and risk
management to achieve the identified critical success factors.
Keywords VUCA, Volatility, Complexity, Ambiguity, Uncertainly, Business excellence
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
Running a business successfully requires overcoming the many challenges posed by the
business environment. These challenges historically have been affecting companies in many
ways (Abidi and Joshi, 2015), but today the impact of these challenges together with their
speed, frequency and intensity are ascending in nature (Johansen and Euchner, 2013;
Bolboli and Reiche, 2013).
These collective challenges, with their dynamic nature and frequent changes, are usually
represented by the “VUCA” acronym, which was first used by the “US Army War College”
in 1998 (Whiteman, 1998, p. 15; Manwani, 2013), where “VUCA” represents business
environment “Volatility,” “Uncertainty,” “Complexity” and “Ambiguity.”
When the business environment was relatively stable, excellence via the traditional
quality tools and techniques was enough to succeed. However today, the winning criteria is
not just product or service quality, but now includes its delivery in a fast and responsive
manner (Horney et al., 2010). This has created a need to re-examine the business excellence
concept that emerged from within a stable business environment so as to understand how
the increased dynamics of “VUCA” affects this knowledge area.
The body of literature in the business excellence area is very rich with different
frameworks and models. To research “Business Excellence” under high “VUCA” conditions,
the two terms were combined in six library database searches, but this resulted in
only two English language documents namely, Suciu and Petrescu-Prahova (2011)
The TQM Journal
Vol. 29 No. 5, 2017
pp. 705-724
© Emerald Publishing Limited
1754-2731
DOI 10.1108/TQM-12-2016-0109
Received 13 December 2016
Revised 25 May 2017
Accepted 10 July 2017
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/1754-2731.htm
705
Business
excellence in a
VUCA
environment
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