Systemic Business Excellence in the Age of Digital and Societal Disruption

Companies operate more and more in a context of conflicting digital, societal and institutional disruption – where the explanatory power of traditional business excellence models comes to its limits. The existing tools, mostly framed with the linearity regulation of homogeneous environments, favor their development towards linear causality, internal optimization and controllability parting little guidance for organization operating in the realm of ongoing uncertainty and systemic complexities. Current writing on digital transformation, resilience and sustainability recognises these disruptions but is fragmented in considering models of excellence and systemic thinking together as well. This gap is addressed in the discussion of how BE can be reframed as a systemic and dynamic capability geared towards environments characterized by ongoing disruption. Methodologically, the research adopts a conceptual synthesis and integrative perspective-building approach, informed by business excellence, digitization disruption, resilience and innovation systems studies. The analysis draws upon a systemic interpretation of organisational performance and the Triple Helix relationship among academia, industry and government. The findings suggest that business excellence is not static performance level but an adaptive competence that is a function of governance flexibility, innovation integration and resilience in times of prolonged turbulence. The results also underline the mediating effects of governance and institutional coordination as enabling factors for organizations to turn digital disruption into a competitive advantage. There is also a theoretical input to the field in that it develops a theoretically informed reconceptualization of business excellence which brings into sharper focus the way in which thinking about excellence can be aligned with current non-linear, interconnected and uncertain times while providing implications for both practice and policy.