The paper reports the findings of an examination of self-assessment practic
es against the criteria of the business excellence model in ten different o
rganizations. Among the main findings are that organizations attempt a numb
er of approaches while gaining experience of self-assessment and therefore
the movement from one approach to another needs to be planned and improved
guidance provided, that management give insufficient consideration to the r
esources required for each method of self-assessment and that there was a l
ack of consistency in the coordination of the self-assessment process. It i
s also pointed out that, among the organizations studied, there has been a
lack of emphasis on the total quality management (TQM) philosophy and its p
rinciples in the self-assessment process. It appears that the concept has b
een rebadged as business excellence to move away from existing pre-concepts
of TQM.