Search results

The purpose of this paper is to discuss improvement of the business of health care delivery through the application of systematic problem solving. This was strengthened by recurrence prevention through standardization at every level transforming into culture.

The methodology utilized is set derived from the true fiber and fabric of Toyota, the Toyota Business Practice (TBP) or eight-step problem solving and its translation into health care thinking by aligning to the process of clinical diagnosis of patients. The methodology that gives energy and direction to TBP is Hoshin Kanri, a Japanese approach to strategic planning. When you combine focus and purpose through strategic direction alongside a culture of systematic problem solving you get results.

The application of the Toyota mindset resulted in a cultural shift which built on the strength of the current organizational culture. This approach had a broad impact on the program impacting leadership and management roles, improved employee engagement, complete visibility of organizational priorities, improved system performance, visibility and awareness of the vision and defined measures that drive the health care system. This has also resulted in cost diversions of approximately five million dollars CDN.

A grass roots application of real-time problem solving through strategic alignment.

Using strikingly different managerial techniques from conventional organizations, 12 Step Fellowships, most prominently Alcoholics Anonymous, provide useful clues to producing more effective, functional and humane organizations in contrast with our many dysfunctional firms which abuse their employees, behave unethically towards their customers, damage their social and ecological habitat and find it difficult to complete in a turbulent global environment. The founding Fellowship, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), extends to 131 countries with 1,550,000 members while the second largest, Al‐Anon/Alateen, has 414,000 members in 84 countries. Without advertising, government support or experts, AA is widely considered the most effective method for treating alcoholism. This success story was produced by members who, prior to AA, were themselves severely dysfunctional and often unemployable. Examines facets of the Fellowships (organizational structure, culture, communication and problem solving techniques) to demonstrate a powerful, little studied model for organizational learning and transformation.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze Toyota's management directed kaizen activities named Jishuken. Currently, there are many variations in understanding how Toyota develops its managers to support daily kaizen, especially when Toyota managers have different levels of understanding of Toyota production system (TPS) and skills essential in applying TPS.

This paper will study Toyota's Jishuken process in the context of strengthening TPS and analyze both the technical and management aspects of Toyota's Jishuken process.

When integrated into plant‐wide long‐term continuous improvement, Jishukens can be extremely effective at developing management's ability to conduct and to teach others to conduct daily kaizen and problem solving. This paper shows how Jishukens function within the TPS system to continuously improve managers' understanding of TPS both for their own concrete problem solving and to support manager's roles in communicating, coaching and teaching problem solving to production workers.

Most attempts to imitate Toyota fail because techniques are adopted piecemeal with little understanding of why they exist or what kind of organizational culture is needed to keep them alive. Jishuken serves as an example of a technique which is successful only when embedded within the right organizational culture.

This study aims at determining the factors that favor a systematic approach to deal with complex operational and strategic problems. Management literature on problem-solving makes a clear distinction between either fixing a problem temporarily by eliminating its symptoms or solving it by diagnosing and altering underlying causes. Adopting a cognitive perspective of the dual-processing theory, this study labels these two approaches intuitive problem-solving and systematic problem-solving (SPS). While the superior effectiveness of SPS in fostering organizational learning is widely documented, existing literature fails to provide an overview of the conditions that support the adoption of SPS.

This paper presents a systematic literature review to shed light on the main supporting factors of SPS in operational as well as strategic domains.

Seven supporting factors of SPS (namely, nature of the problem, time availability, information availability, collaborative culture, transformational leadership, organizational learning infrastructure and environmental dynamism) are first identified and then discussed in an integrative model.

This work is an original attempt to inclusively address organizational, environmental and problem nature-related factors that favor SPS adoption. By determining the SPS supporting factors, this study highlights why many organizations fail or struggle to implement and sustain SPS over time.

This paper investigates the cultural influences (ethnic and organisational) on management decision making. Using Michael Kirton’s Adaptors and Innovators (1987) as a model, research was undertaken in Hong Kong with four groups of managers. The groups represented the permutations of expatriate and local managers in the private and public sectors. A comparison of national cultures prefaces the research methodology and the instrument used. Assumptions of culturally induced performance and sector styles were examined, producing some interesting results. The findings have implications for the selection and development of managers in multicultural or Chinese environments. Finally, an area for future research is how training can be used to enable managers to switch consciously between a range of problem‐solving and decision‐making styles.

Illustrates how organizational culture can stifle effective problem solving and decision making. In the organization in question this had critical implications for quality, staff retention and organizational change. The myopic, non‐innovative generation of apparent solutions to major organizational problems made the organization a victim, not a master, of change. Precedent determined action so that “more of the same” becomes the forte of the organization. Investigates the nature of the organizational culture and the mechanisms of influence it exerted over the problem‐solving process. The research utilized a qualitative methodology well suited to investigating organizational culture and was based in a civil service agency. Suggests an alternative, or model, culture, the adoption of which would enable the organization to cope with environmental and organizational change. Offers recommendations which derive from the research.

To develop hypotheses aimed at finding ways to take full advantage of the benefits associated with selecting and hiring dissimilar employees such as creativity, productivity, and problem solving, while avoiding negative consequences such as lower job satisfaction and increased turnover.

A review of the diversity, socialization, and culture literature was conducted. In addition, this research is based on configurational theory and the idea that all the constructs interact with one another in order to affect outcomes in an organization.

The literature review and theory development support the idea that, in order to benefit from the positive outcomes related to diversity, organizations should implement individualized socialization tactics within a collectivistic organizational culture.

The hypotheses need to be empirically tested.

This research suggests that it is possible for managers to get the most out of a diverse workforce while minimizing the negative effects. One of the main issues with diversity is the increased conflict and turnover. By implementing individualistic socialization tactics within a collectivistic culture, organizations will benefit from employees' backgrounds and experiences, while promoting teamwork and a cohesive organization.

This paper fills a void in the diversity literature by suggesting that it is through socialization and culture that one can overcome the negative effects of diversity.

Organizations are constantly striving to develop and enhance knowledge of employees who involve in strategic business processes by which they aim for an organizational knowledge creation to achieve a competitive advantage. Accordingly, they encourage employees to involve in basic knowledge management (KM) processes and establish infrastructure, particularly, supportive culture and communication facilities for knowledge acquisition and sharing in order to broaden both human capital and organizational knowledge base. In this direction, the purpose of this paper is to develop a hierarchical structure of KM that aims to develop or create human capital in an organization and empirically analyzes the model fit with the data.

Data are collected from 401 employees of Indian manufacturing firms. Factor analyses for identifying and validating the structure of KM and regression analysis for examining the associations of KM dimensions with certain demographic characteristics of employee and organization are performed.

Organizations show KM concepts' demonstration on developing human capital through tactical KM process and problem‐solving approach, communication‐oriented culture, and innovation‐supportive culture. The results confirm the theoretical hierarchical structure of KM with data. In addition, these dimensions are moderately associated with certain characteristics of employees and organizations.

Firms, which are small and medium in size and particularly private‐owned, create human capital through a hierarchical KM structure.

This paper analyzes the instruments of KM in view of creating human capital.

Many companies are shifting their focus away from individual transactions toward developing long‐term, mutually supportive relationships with their customers. Salespeople are the main implementers of such relationships, as they act as the interface between companies and customers. Negotiation is an important part of relationship development, but salespeople’s negotiating styles are influenced by culture and the ability to adapt to cultures of specific markets and specific customers. This study proposes a simple conceptual model of how cultural issues at three different levels – national, organizational, individual – influence salespeople’s negotiating styles. Qualitative in‐depth interviews were employed to explore the impact of national culture, organizational culture, and individual sales rep competence in dealing with culture on salespeople’s negotiating styles.

The objective of this paper is to present different perspectives on building “trust” among supply chain participants working on construction projects.

A case study methodology was adopted; with five construction projects selected as five case studies for the trust in construction project on the basis a selection criteria devised for the research project. Over 40 interviews were conducted with participants operating at different levels in their respective organisations and at different point in the supply chain.

The information provided by the multiple informants was, to a large extent, consistent with much of the academic literature relating to the importance of and barriers to trust. Specifically, the case studies highlighted: what people within the construction industry understand by trust, reliance, and honest professional relationship; the key factors that contribute towards building trust and factors that result into breakdown of trust; and organisational and project related factors that influence trust and relationships among people within the industry.

The findings from this study are limited due to: a small number of case studies undertaken, focused within the North West Region of England, and limited time and resources available. However, the ideas proposed for ways to develop trust in construction projects as seen from project findings have important implications for not only the clients but also for the main contractors and sub‐contractors who need to pay greater attention to build trusting and long‐term relationship as part of an integrated supply chain in order to deliver the continuous demand for services especially from public sector clients.

If more businesses operating in the construction sector gave more thought to the importance of trust in construction projects then this could have a significant impact on contract design and over all procurement strategy. Specifically the repetitive work carried out by the local authorities in the UK, such as school building and maintenance, social housing stock improvement, etc., can be subcontracted to the contractors on a longer term basis resulting into long term supply chain relationship among organisations and cost savings.

The research is among the first attempts in response to Latham report published in 1994, in order to explore the role of trust in construction projects, from the perspective of multiple stakeholders. The paper provides insights into the practical issues that prevent the widespread development of trust within the construction industry, which is a challenge that clearly warrants further attention from academics and practitioners.