Messages
Assessing quality, and determining how far it has been achieved is a difficult and delicate task.
The late US President Dwight Eisenhower said that if we craved success, we must first achieve quality. It is this correlation between quality and success that formed the foundation for the Hong Kong Management Association's Quality Award, which completes its first decade this year.
By honouring the finest examples of excellence in management, the association seeks to spur others to emulate such examples. It urges all of us to recognise that the desire for success must be accompanied by the quest for excellence.
Through the association's initiative, the Quality Award has become the benchmark of achievement in Hong Kong, on a par with the American Malcolm Baldridge Award, the famed Deming Prize in Japan, and the European Quality Award. The measurements we use to determine awardees match criteria in other major regions.
This year there are 18 applications for the HKMA Quality Award. This indicates the high level of competition in this prestigious award which sees for the first time three overall winners.
We were deeply impressed by the quality drive and results these organisations have achieved.
On behalf of the Quality Award Organising Committee, I offer our congratulations to the winners, and our thanks for their contribution.
Our experience in adjudicating this year's award has made one fact very clear. Without question, the typical management profile in Hong Kong, while preserving its Hong Kong character, is increasingly measuring up to global standards.
The best of Hong Kong companies are, in that sense, global companies. And our hope is that the HKMA Quality Award will continue to spur this trend in the future to further contribute to Hong Kong's status and importance in the international business world.
ALFRED CHAN
Chairman of the Organising Committee
2001 HKMA Quality Award
