Purpose: The purpose is to identify and explore important quality-related challenges facing organizations, and how current excellence models incorporate these challenges.

Methodology: The article is based on a Delphi study in Swedish organizations, 49 challenges were generated and ranked according to importance. The top 10 ranked challenges were compared to the principles of four excellence models.

Findings: The excellence models seem to still be relevant since their content matches many of the challenges identified. The MBNQA and the SIQ models were found to have the most comprehensive coverage, while the ISO model had limited coverage.

Research Limitations/Implications: Three areas for further research were identified: 1) how QM can evolve in different contexts with varying needs in terms of adaptive and explorative capabilities, 2) the interfaces of QM and sustainability, and ways to understand how customers and stakeholders can be active contributors to improvements and 3) the roles of the owners and board of directors in QM, and how to organize and distribute responsibilities of the QM work.

Practical and Social Implications: Three important challenges could be addressed in upcoming revisions of excellence models: 1) making QM a strategic issue for company owners; 2) involving customers in the improvement activities; and 3) developing processes that are robust, while still easily adaptable.

Originality/Value: The Delphi study has identified upcoming challenges in the QM area based on input from 188 quality professionals.

Attractive quality has for two decades been accentuated as a strong driver of loyalty, word-of-mouth and saleability. Recent elaborations of the concept of attractive quality however point to obstacles to the development of quality practices, such as engineering methods, to support the creation of attractive quality in practice. One obstacle is the lack of explanations as to why certain aspects of an offer are perceived as an attractive quality. There is a need to understand why attractive quality occurs. This paper aims to address these obstacles by presenting the results of a search for mechanisms claimed to cause attractive quality in literature. As a result, the paper identifies and relates two fundamentally different mechanisms considered important for the generation of attractive quality. The need-based roots of attractive quality point at an explanation in terms of the satisfaction of high-level needs. This is in sharp contrast to the currently dominant explanation of attractive quality as the exceeding of expectations. The two mechanisms are further distinguished and related to each other resulting in the classification of three different types of attractive quality. The three types are designated as 'Surprisers', 'Life Enrichers', and 'Attraction Boosters'. The 'Life Enrichers', which are defined as satisfying high-level needs of the customer, are highlighted as an important and promising area for future research.

Sweden has experienced an increase in sickness absenteeism, stress-related health problems and a deterioration of psychosocial working conditions. Several researchers have emphasized that leadership with a focus on developing human resource practices is a necessary component of a high organizational performance. The purpose of this article is to explore whether there are patterns in leadership values and methodologies associated with subordinates' views of leadership, health outcomes and quality aspects. Four public and four private organizations in northern Sweden were studied. McGregor's X and Y hypotheses, plus three other hypotheses, were used as a base for the analyses. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with the leaders, questionnaires (completed by leaders and co-workers), and assessment of selected human resource accounting data (sickness absenteeism). The leader views were mirrored with the co-worker views through a comparison of qualitative and quantitative results in a stepwise analysis process. The study's main findings were that leaders with more X hypotheses get lower results concerning employee-judged leadership and quality aspects and, to some extent, lower results concerning health outcomes. The explanatory analyses concerning leadership and health are complex with many influencing factors.

During the last years the Swedish working life has been characterized by increased levels of sickness absenteeism, stress related health problems and a deterioration of the psychosocial work conditions. Since there are clear local variations concerning health at different workplaces, it is often stated that differences in working environment and work organizational factors constitute an important explanation. Several researchers emphasizes that leadership with a focus on developing human resource practices is a necessary component of high organizational performance. The purpose of this article is to explore if there are patterns in leadership values and methodologies connected to health outcomes and quality aspects. McGregor's X and Y hypotheses plus three other hypotheses are used as a base for the analyses. Data has been collected by in-deep interviews with the leaders, questionnaires to both leaders and all employees, and human resource accounting figures. The leader views are mirrored with the employee views, by comparing qualitative and quantitative results in a step wise analyses process. Case study organizations are four public and four private organizations in northern Sweden. The study main findings are that leaders with more X hypotheses get lower results concerning employee judged leadership and quality aspects, and to some extent also lower results concerning health outcomes. Clear differences between the studied organizations are noted. One interesting result is that one organization (C1) positively distinguishes concerning quality and health aspects. A conclusion in this study is that Y oriented leaders work more intense with the TQM values continuous improvements, base decisions on facts, co-worker commitment and leadership commitment.

Good management and leadership are key-factors for sustainable development and long-term success in all types of organisations. Although, many organisations are still struggling with quality problems, sick absence and financial difficulties caused by poor top management. Many researchers have reported on relationships between good management and working environment, quality and efficiency. So the question is why god management is not practised to a larger extent? In this paper, management methodologies for sustainable health among employees, customer satisfaction and good bottom line results are explored by studying top leaders in three Swedish successful organisations. General questions dealt with in the paper are: How can managers commit employees to be part of the proactive work with sustainable health? And what methodologies can top managers use to get well-motivated employees, a good working environment, satisfied customers and good financial results? The studied organisations are two manufacturing companies and one hospital. The organisations have received national awards for their excellence in leadership, internal partnership, working environment and efficiency. They all demonstrate good examples of long-term work with sustainable health among employees which has decreased sick absence. Explorative qualitative methods have been used to identify management methodologies in the case organisations. The results confirm a relation between leadership and sustainable health. In all organisations sustainable leadership has been characterised by great humanity, a long-range perspective and a holistic view of management. These management methodologies with concrete examples have been described in the paper. The leadership has led to healthier organizations with more committed and satisfied employees, and the indicated relationships between sustainable leadership, improved health among employees, satisfied co-workers and bottom line results among the case organisations probably demonstrate a significant improvement potential for today's organizations.