Enablers: Which Factors Create Quality in an Agency – Dr. Florian Bresler

What an enabler is

The word comes from the EFQM model. It refers to prerequisites that make good results possible in the first place. In the QMC model, the quality management model for the communication industry, these are resources and concepts of an agency, material and immaterial, that determine how well a communication process succeeds.

The quality of communication itself cannot be observed directly. The model treats it as a hidden variable that arises from the interplay of the enablers and shows in the client's success. A learning loop feeds the success achieved back into the enablers: those who learn from completed projects improve the foundations of the next one.

The four enablers at a glance

The four enablers follow the criteria of the EFQM model and are renamed for the industry:

• Leadership efficiency (EFQM: leadership). Measured through democratic participation, charismatic behavior and the identification of the agency head with the organization.
• Employee quality (EFQM: people). Measured through satisfaction, entrepreneurial orientation and communication competence.
• Communication strategy (EFQM: policy and strategy). Measured through the agency's information competence as well as commitment, trust and two-way participation of clients.
• Resource integration (EFQM: resources and partnerships). Measured through knowledge management, electronic systems in the supply chain and the involvement of clients in learning processes.

How the enablers came about

The basis was 31 empirical studies on the prerequisites of good communication. From them the dissertation derived four categories for each enabler. In a preliminary study, agency executives rated the relevance of each category on a scale from 0 to 3; categories clearly below the overall mean of 1.70 were dropped. For the enablers this affected four categories: communicative openness, employee engagement, individual client approach and clients' word of mouth.

Twelve statements remained. In the main survey, clients who had carried out a completed project with an agency rated them on a scale from 1 (poor performance) to 5 (top performance).

What the survey shows

A structural equation model estimates how strongly each enabler explains communication quality. The result is clear: in the final model, leadership efficiency reaches a standardized weight of 0.98. Employee quality follows with 0.14 and communication strategy with 0.12, and the latter is not significant. Resource integration showed no relationship even in the initial model (estimate −0.04, p = 0.67) and dropped out of the model.

It is remarkable that a high rating does not have to explain anything: knowledge management received the highest mean of all twelve enabler statements, 3.75, and still showed no significant relationship with perceived quality. The dissertation interprets this to mean that clients see an agency rather as a personal partner and place their trust in a specific head of agency, less in the network behind it.

The other enablers shrank as well. Of the traits of employee quality, communication competence remained (loading 0.95), while entrepreneurial orientation did not reach significance (p = 0.72). In communication strategy, the two-way participation of clients carried the factor almost alone (weight 0.87). The dissertation reads this as a shift from rational to emotional factors: what matters more than specialist information is, accordingly, the feeling of being part of a committed network. The study did not test this assumption, however.

What this means for agencies

The findings are well-founded pointers, not a guarantee for every agency. They suggest an order of priorities:

• First the agency head: clients experience an agency above all through the people at the top.
• Then the team: in the final model, employee quality rests almost entirely on communication competence.
• After that strategy and resources: they remain important but have a weaker effect in this study than the interplay inside the agency.

Two limitations belong here. Cross-relationships between the enablers are not shown in the model; part of what strategy and resources achieve may be contained in the leadership factor. And all values rest on the judgments of clients from the customer circles of two agency networks, not on measurements among their customers.