Excellence models beyond total quality management: inception, thematic structure and forthcoming paths

This article aims to uncover the inception, thematic structure, and forthcoming paths of excellence models (EMs) research and to shed light on the relationship between EMs and total quality management (TQM). We analysed 950 empirical articles from 1989 to 2022, published in 396 scientific journals indexed on Clarivate Analytics Web of Science Core Collection (TM) and Scopus, from all subject categories. We used content analysis, regression, citation, co-citation, and co-occurrence of research topics. The results unveiled the foundational clusters, current thematic streams, and forthcoming paths constituting EMs' autonomous research structure. They also show that most researchers look to EMs as independent management instruments beyond TQM. This article helps researchers of different fields to investigate EMs efficiently and reliably since it identifies research trends and forthcoming paths, along with the most relevant authors, journals, and articles on EMs subjects. It enables managers to utilise EMs more effectively and evolve towards innovative training approaches to meet sustainable development challenges. This article is the most comprehensive bibliometric analysis and integrated systematic literature review of EMs research. It is also the first study to investigate EMs as a stand-alone research subject adding knowledge to its relationship with TQM and discovering latent and emerging research topics.