Continuous improvement: Exploring alternative organizational designs

Abstract

Continuous improvement (CI) is an organizational innovation and design principles rooted in total quality management paradigm. CI mechanisms and organizational designs developed in one firm are usually too complex to be transferred or adopted as is by another organization. We illustrate that successful CI efforts can be organized in various ways in different industry environments and cultural context. A set of design principles is introduced. We suggest that product process standardization and power distance are the key contextual variables influencing the choice of organizational design of continuous improvement.