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1 – 10 of 16Fernando Ruiz-Pérez, Álvaro Lleó, Elisabeth Viles and Daniel Jurburg
This paper unifies previous research literature on employee participation in continuous improvement (CI) activities through the development and validation of a conceptual model…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper unifies previous research literature on employee participation in continuous improvement (CI) activities through the development and validation of a conceptual model. The purpose of this model is to illustrate how organizational drivers foster organizational and individual enablers which, in turn, strengthen employee participation in CI. The article also discusses the results and managerial implications.
Design/methodology/approach
Firstly, the article introduces the main variables affecting employee participation in CI, looking at the different possible relationships proposed in existing literature. In accordance with the Kaye and Anderson (1999) framework, these variables are categorized into organizational drivers, organizational and individual enablers and individual outcomes. Based on these categories, a model was put forward and empirically validated using data collected from three Spanish companies (n = 483) and using partial least squares structural equations modelling (PLS–SEM).
Findings
A model was put forward, proposing PIRK systems (power, information, rewards, knowledge) as the main organizational driver of employee participation in CI activities. PIRK impacts positively on social influence (organizational enabler), self-efficacy and job satisfaction (individual enablers). These enablers, together with employee intention of participating, help determine employee participation in CI activities.
Practical implications
Organizations with CI programmes should develop systems based on employee empowerment, information, rewards and knowledge in order to foster their self-efficacy and seek out a culture where social influence may help to improve job satisfaction. By suitably managing these organizational drivers, managers can help to further develop certain organizational and individual enablers responsible for fostering employee participation in CI activities.
Originality/value
By unifying different behavioural and CI-related frameworks, this paper carries out an in-depth study into the process of fostering employee participation as the key aspect in helping organizations sustain CI programmes. This paper shows the importance of managing PIRK organizational drivers as levers in the process of developing certain organizational and individual enablers, which are responsible for enhancing employee participation in CI.
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Daniel Jurburg, Elisabeth Viles, Martin Tanco, Ricardo Mateo and Álvaro Lleó
Companies use continuous improvement (CI) as a strategy to achieve business excellence and innovation. Yet CI initiatives fail mostly due to a lack of employee engagement. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Companies use continuous improvement (CI) as a strategy to achieve business excellence and innovation. Yet CI initiatives fail mostly due to a lack of employee engagement. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the CI literature and the technology acceptance model (TAM), a comprehensive model called continuous improvement acceptance mode (CIAM) was developed to understand the main organisational antecedents that predict employee intention to participate in CI. The CIAM is based on structural equation modelling using partial least squares and it was validated in a large manufacturing plant in Europe.
Findings
Emulating the findings of the TAM, this study shows that employee intention to participate can be predicted by two variables called ease of participating and usefulness of participating. The CIAM then relates these constructs with relevant CI enablers found in the CI literature.
Practical implications
The CIAM could help academics and practitioners to better understand employee participation in CI activities, allowing CI systems to be better designed and achieve long-term sustainability.
Originality/value
The CIAM presents new variables and interactions that help to understand employee participation in CI activities. Some of these variables and interactions have received scant attention in the CI literature and thus they are worth investigating in greater depth in the future.
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Alvaro Lleo, Elisabeth Viles, Daniel Jurburg and Javier Santos
This paper aims to identify key middle manager trustworthy behaviours that encourage employees’ participation in continuous improvement activities in industrial contexts.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify key middle manager trustworthy behaviours that encourage employees’ participation in continuous improvement activities in industrial contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
The list of behaviours has been developed in two different phases. First, the authors conducted two concept mappings with operators and middle managers and, subsequently, the authors combined and integrated both points of view. Second, the authors developed an expert panel with researchers, consultants and experienced practitioners of industrial management for debugging and reducing the results, presenting the final list of behaviours.
Findings
This work presents 55 different middle manager trustworthy behaviours divided into four different categories: human qualities; training and development; technical and managerial competencies; and team building.
Research limitations/implications
This paper contributes to existing literature about sustainable continuous improvement systems highlighting the role of middle managers and proposes a set of specific middle manager trustworthy behaviours for increasing supervisors’ influence on operator participation.
Originality/value
After extracting the knowledge of different stakeholders, the list of behaviours identified can serve as a useful tool for recruiting, training, evaluating and developing a supervisors’ managerial style that enhances operator participation in continuous improvement activities.
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Ana Paula Lista, Guilherme Luz Tortorella, Marina Bouzon, Matthias Thürer and Daniel Jurburg
This study aims to investigate the impact of traditional teaching and active learning methods in lean management (LM) on the development of both soft and hard skills.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate the impact of traditional teaching and active learning methods in lean management (LM) on the development of both soft and hard skills.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a longitudinal study, team members from two different organisations (the administrative sector of a public higher education institution and a public teaching hospital), each adopting different teaching methods to support their LM trainings, were systematically examined at four moments during an 18-month period. How teaching methods impacted team members’ development and knowledge was then assessed using multivariate data analysis techniques.
Findings
Results indicated that LM trainings can provide significant impacts when a combination of traditional teaching methods and active learning is adopted. Traditional teaching methods can be a good choice for learning hard skills depending on resources’ availability. However, it is recommended to include active learning methods to assist in the comprehension of more complex and abstract LM concepts (soft skills).
Originality/value
Although there exists a large number of publications on the relationship between LM implementation and teaching methods, the number of studies that consider the development of both hard and soft skills is rather limited. This study complements the existing literature on LM by identifying which teaching methods can support the development of hard skills and which the development of soft skills. Such identification facilitates the work of both scholars wishing either to begin or to dig deeper into this sphere and practitioners pursuing the best outcomes from LM.
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Martin Tanco, Matias Escuder, Gerardo Heckmann, Daniel Jurburg and Josue Velazquez
For the past 20 years, Latin American countries have gone from being a low-cost region to significant players in the world economy, with five of its countries ranked among the…
Abstract
Purpose
For the past 20 years, Latin American countries have gone from being a low-cost region to significant players in the world economy, with five of its countries ranked among the world’s 50th largest by gross domestic product. This paper aims to study the contribution of Latin American researchers in the field of supply chain management (SCM) to aid an understanding of the Latin American impact within global supply chains (SCs).
Design/methodology/approach
The authors present a study which includes a bibliometric analysis of the papers authored by Latin American researchers in the SCM field and which were exclusively published in journals included in the Journal Citation Reports. In addition, the authors conducted a survey to Latin American researchers and consultants to gain greater understanding of the main difficulties, which in their opinion, have negatively affected the SCM area in Latin America within the past five years, and identify possible misalignment between Latin American research and the challenges for SC in the region.
Findings
The results show that Latin American research on SCM in the past nine years is not significant for the field considering the number of papers, citations and the papers published in top journals. Another interesting finding is the lack of collaboration among researchers from different Latin American countries, as well as with corporate. Finally, survey results reveal significant differences regarding the main difficulties each country perceived as relevant.
Practical implications
Comparing results from both analyses, relevant misalignments stand out between published research and the main difficulties detected. These suggest a challenging opportunity for Latin America, emphasizing the need to increase research contribution of the scientific community, through collaboration and alignment toward overcoming the most troublesome difficulties for Latin America. Therefore, the authors suggest future regional research directions which could also help global companies to tackle the challenges faced and optimize performance of their Latin American SCs.
Originality/value
To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous research on the quality and impact of Latin American research in SCM has been conducted. Also, misalignments between researchers and practitioners in the region, which allow identifying weaknesses of Latin American SCs, have not been studied before.
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Guilherme Tortorella, Rapinder Sawhney, Daniel Jurburg, Istefani Carisio de Paula, Diego Tlapa and Matthias Thurer
The objective of this research is twofold. First, we aim at identifying the pairwise relationships between Lean Production (LP) practices and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies…
Abstract
Purpose
The objective of this research is twofold. First, we aim at identifying the pairwise relationships between Lean Production (LP) practices and Industry 4.0 (I4.0) technologies. Second, based on these results, we propose a framework for Lean Automation (LA) implementation, in which I4.0 technologies are integrated into LP practices.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve that, a cross-sector survey was performed with 147 manufacturers that are undergoing a LP implementation aided by novel information and communication technologies from I4.0. Multivariate data analysis was applied in order to underpin the proposed framework for LA.
Findings
Findings indicate that I4.0 technologies are positively correlated with LP practices, providing evidence to bear the proposition of a LA framework that can potentially overcome traditional barriers and challenges of a LP implementation.
Originality/value
As previous studies have approached LA implementation from a narrow perspective or including a limited set of LP practices and I4.0 technologies, the proposition of an integrated framework unfolds a wider range of synergistic implementations that may corroborate to a holistic approach for continuous improvement in the Fourth Industrial Revolution era.
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Daniel Jurburg, Elisabeth Viles, Carmen Jaca and Martin Tanco
Continuous improvement (CI) is regarded as a powerful approach to achieve business excellence. However, the implementation is not simple as it involves managing a considerable…
Abstract
Purpose
Continuous improvement (CI) is regarded as a powerful approach to achieve business excellence. However, the implementation is not simple as it involves managing a considerable amount of tangible and intangible factors throughout the whole organization. The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap by presenting first-hand information about how companies really implement and organize their CI processes.
Design/methodology/approach
The study was based on semi-structured interviews in ten high performing companies in the Basque Country, a region in northern Spain well known for its business quality. The objective was to analyze the state of their CI processes, putting special focus on how the organizational structure integrates with the CI processes and what are the characteristics of the corresponding measurement system.
Findings
The study shows a lack of company-wide focus on CI, little written evidence of previous improvement activities, unclear improvement process owner, and poor use of adequate measurement systems to monitor CI.
Practical implications
Managers should understand that is not enough to guarantee their own commitment and provide the structure, since in order to become learning organization, a different holistic approach towards the CI process must be adopted.
Originality/value
While most previous work on this field have focused primarily on how to implement different techniques in order to achieve better productive performance, this study presents empirical research from a more holistic approach, assessing the characteristics affecting CI by considering strategy, structure, and the measurement system.
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Martin Tanco, Daniel Jurburg and Matias Escuder
The purpose of this article is to create a list of supply chain (SC)-related difficulties based on the existing SC literature. It also presents an exploratory survey concerning…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to create a list of supply chain (SC)-related difficulties based on the existing SC literature. It also presents an exploratory survey concerning the main difficulties which Uruguayan managers consider to have the most negative impact on their SCs.
Design/methodology/approach
The survey was carried out within small- and medium-sized manufacturing and retailing companies in Uruguay, yielding 99 valid responses. A statistical analysis of the survey is introduced including a ranking of the difficulties and a grouping of those using factorial analysis. A difficulty, as understood throughout this paper, is any factor that significantly impacts, or has impacted in recent years, the performance of SCs.
Findings
Eighteen main difficulties hindering SC performance were identified. Moreover, an exploratory analysis of the survey showed that the main concerns to SC managers are related to workforce availability and government policies.
Practical implications
Difficulties encountered by SCs would not only be of interest to scholars but also to the managers who face the challenge of the day-to-day managing of a SC. Once the difficulties over the SCs are identified, strategies can be designed and implemented to attain desired benefits. Today’s intense competition requires firms to be more aware of their SC and to achieve excellence in many areas, especially at small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Originality/value
There is a growing body of literature concerning isolated issues that SCs have to face; however, an exhaustive list of difficulties is hardly available. Moreover, first-hand information of Uruguayan managers was ascertained to rank each one using a Likert scale.
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Daniel Carnerud, Carmen Jaca and Ingela Bäckström
The purpose of this paper is to depict how Kaizen and continuous improvement (CI) are represented in scientific journals focusing on quality management (QM) from the 1980s until…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to depict how Kaizen and continuous improvement (CI) are represented in scientific journals focusing on quality management (QM) from the 1980s until 2017. Additionally, the study aims to examine how Kaizen is studied and described and how the relationship between Kaizen and CI is portrayed.
Design/methodology/approach
The study applies a mixed methods approach to search for tendencies and outlines concerning Kaizen and CI in four scientific journals focusing on QM and two focusing on OM. The data set contains entries from 1980 until 2017, which makes it possible to depict how Kaizen has evolved over more than 30 years.
Findings
The findings show that Kaizen and CI attained special interest in the mid-1990s, after which interest appears to have decreased. However, the findings imply that a regenerated interest for the areas spiked post 2010. In addition, the results indicate that Kaizen is on the one hand accepted by one part of the management community but on the other hand completely ignored by the rest. Finally, the data illuminate a need to strengthen and clarify Kaizen’s theoretical basis and its relationship to CI.
Practical implications
If an aspiration exists to increase the success rate of Kaizen implementation, the results from the study highlight the need to address and clarify epistemological, terminological and theoretical issues.
Originality/value
Prior data mining studies pinpointing how Kaizen and CI have evolved over the last 30 years appear not to exist.
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