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Below is a list of people at COER. For more information on individual members, click on their name.
DR ROBIN MANN
Title: Director, COER
Ahmed Abbas
Title: Senior Researcher/Consultant
STEPHEN WELCH
Position: Financial Director – BPIR.com Ltd
Stephen leads the BPIR, a best practice resource
Saad Ghafoor
Excellence Without Borders
Saad Ghafoor is working on COER’s project Excellence Without Borders (EWB), which is a global study to investigate the current state of and best practices in designing business excellence frameworks/ models and promoting, facilitating, awarding, supporting, and measuring the success of BE on a national/ regional/ sectoral level.
This research is the largest ever on studying the national strategies of business excellence custodian organisations (that are the organisations responsible for designing business excellence frameworks and deploying business excellence in their respective countries). Saad had 29 business excellence custodian organisations from 26 countries participate in his research (that can be found here), out of which, 13 custodian organisations also undertook follow-up structured interviews. The Global Excellence Models (GEM) Council (which is an organisation consisting of custodians of the major business excellence frameworks and national business excellence award bodies) is the sponsor of this project.
The findings were compiled in the form of an anonymised Report for Public Release containing aggregated data and a confidential detailed report for use by the project participants only. The detailed report comprises of analysed results from the project and indicates the individual responses from the participants. The report will help business excellence custodian organisations to significantly improve the management practices and performance of organisations that the participating business excellence custodian organisations are working with.
For the literature review of his PhD, Saad compiled 415 peer-reviewed business excellence papers published from 1990 to 2020 that are listed here. This study (prepared in the form of a peer-reviewed paper) was accepted for publication in the prestigious Total Quality Management and Business Excellence journal and can be found here. In addition to this, there are six more business excellence papers by Saad that are at different stages of their peer-reviewed publications. He is expecting to finish his PhD in 2021.
Saad has also undertaken a yearly review of the number of the business excellence custodian organisations with the latest one (undertaken in September 2020) listing 56 countries having active (held in 2018 or after) business excellence awards program.
Saad has also assisted COER’s project of launching the Public Service Excellence Program in Tonga in 2018 and COER’s projects in 2017, 2018, and 2020 under the Dubai We Learn initiative.
Saad can be contacted at ghafoor.saad@gmail.com
Dr. Atif Baig
Dr. Atif Baig is a business excellence consultant and former senior banker with over 15 years of leadership experience spanning retail banking, performance excellence, and benchmarking. He has led large-scale portfolios and transformation initiatives across Asia and Africa in senior roles with leading financial institutions. Now based in New Zealand, Atif consults on business excellence, TRADE® Benchmarking, and organisational capability development. He serves as a Senior Consultant with the Centre for Organisational Excellence Research (COER) and has played a key role in different flagship initiatives.
He is the architect of the Organisational Excellence Architecture (OEA)—a practical framework developed through a global research study involving 50 organisations across 17 countries. The OEA toolkit enables organisations to embed strategy and achieve sustainable performance excellence.
He holds a PhD in Business Excellence from Massey University, New Zealand, and an Executive MBA from Warwick Business School (UK), bringing a rare combination of hands-on leadership, evidence-based consulting, and strategic transformation expertise to the organisations he supports.
Key Projects
- 2025: Contributed as consultant and co-author to the Executive Program for Benchmarking (EPB) publication, showcasing nine government benchmarking case studies from Dubai as part of the Dubai Government Excellence Program (DGEP) 6th Cycle.
- 2025: Served as APO Consultant for a Technical Expert Services (TES) project with the Bangladesh National Productivity Organisation (NPO), building institutional capabilities to implement business excellence.
- 2020–2024: Led a global PhD research project on Organisational Excellence Architecture (OEA), involving 50 organisations across 17 countries, resulting in a validated framework and toolkit for systematically implementing business excellence.
Selected Publications and Thought Leadership
- Baig, A., Mann, R., Lockhart, J., & Macpherson, W. (2024). The development of an Organizational Excellence Architecture model to support the implementation of business excellence. The TQM Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-11-2023-0375
- Baig, A., Mann, R., Lockhart, J., & Macpherson, W. (2024). Business excellence assessments – learning from award-winning organizations. The TQM Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/TQM-03-2024-0098
- Baig, M. A. (2024). An exploration of the organisational excellence architecture required to support an award-winning business excellence journey [Doctoral thesis, Massey University, New Zealand]. https://mro.massey.ac.nz/handle/10179/72230
- Baig, A. (2024). Overcoming Strategic Myopia: How Business Excellence Can Drive Sustainable Success. BPIR.com
- Baig, A. (2024). Adapting and Transforming Business Models: How Business Excellence Models Can Help. BPIR.com
- Baig, A. (2024). Unlocking SME Growth: How MESA Leveraged the Baldrige Excellence Framework to Drive Success. BPIR.com
- Baig, A. (2024). Business Excellence Case Study: The VAMED-KMB Business Excellence (BE) Assessment Approach. BPIR.com
Contact
Email: atif@bpir.com / atifbaig37@yahoo.com
Mobile: +64 21 0800 9944
LinkedIn: Atif Baig | LinkedIn / (https://www.linkedin.com/in/atif-baig/)
Associates/Consultants
MICHAEL E. VOSS
Position: Director of Pyxis Consulting
Michael assists with COER’s consultancy projects worldwide.