Excellence in Portuguese higher education institutions

Based upon an empirical study made with the goal of getting a better understanding of Portuguese higher education institutions-in particular, regarding strategic and quality management, innovation practices and tools being adopted-and on the study of several quality assessment models developed both for higher education institutions (CNAVES, 2000a, 2000b, CNE, 2001; CRE, 2000) and organizations in general (EFQM, 1999a; Kanji, 1998), we have developed an excellence model for the Portuguese higher education institutions, based upon nine criteria (Rosa et al., 2001). It was intended that the relationships between the different model criteria could be empirically tested. Therefore, after having clearly defined each of the model's nine criteria and the areas to address within each of them, we tried to validate the model underlying the structure through a questionnaire aimed at assessing how each Portuguese higher education institution is dealing with a series of practices and factors considered to be critical for its quality improvement. In this paper we will present the main results obtained, through a detailed statistical analysis. Structural equation modelling is used to validate the proposed excellence model structure and relationships among its nine underlying criteria through PLS (Partial Least Squares) estimation techniques.