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The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate and clarify the relationship between business process improvement and employees’ behavior. More precisely, the purpose is to test whether a business process improvement initiative has a positive impact on performance and employees’ behavior, namely, motivation, communication and knowledge sharing.

The empirical research of this paper was conducted in the year 2013 in an ICT company on 52 employees who worked in the company’s R&D Centre. Business process improvement is analyzed in the change of work method for software development. Two projects of software development were observed. The data about the projects were collected by using the company’s documentation. The data about employees’ behavior were collected by a specially designed questionnaire.

Business process improvement led to better results and overall performance. Furthermore, it was found that business process improvement enhanced three important elements of employees’ behavior. These are motivation, communication and knowledge sharing.

The main limitations of this study are small research sample, focusing on just the way of business process improvement and on only one company. Therefore, the results cannot be generalized and considered as being generally accepted.

The findings of this study could be useful for ICT companies because it shows the benefits of the Kanban method.

The major contribution of this study is to prove the positive impact of business process improvement initiatives on overall performance and on the special elements of employees’ behavior. This cognition enhances the existing knowledge on business process improvements.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the European Regions for Innovative Productivity project that established Innovative Productivity Centres (IPCs) to assist SMEs in the North Sea Region of Europe to develop a process improvement capability. A conceptual framework explains how a process improvement methodology developed for large firms was adapted and shaped to meet the needs of SMEs.

A comparative case study of 23 SMEs within six European countries. A protocol was developed to collect financial and operational data. This was supplemented by observations, secondary data and field notes. An established research model was used to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the process improvement interventions.

The intervention context and structure of the IPCs varied by country which shaped process improvement interventions at two levels: the country and the firm. During diffusion three process improvement variants emerged that were tailored to fit the local context. Developing a process improvement capability depended upon the availability of company resources, establishing KPIs and change agent support.

The research contributes to knowledge and theory on diffusion and institutionalization by examining how SMEs responded to institutional pressures by implementing process improvement practices in different ways. Heterogeneity of both the IPCs and the external change agents were the drivers in shaping the improvement practices.

Understanding how organisations can institutionalise the outcomes of process improvement initiatives is limited. This paper explores how process changes resulting from improvement initiatives are adhered to, so that the changed processes become the new “norm” and people do not revert to old practices. This study proposes an institutionalisation process for process improvement initiatives.

Firstly, a literature review identified Tolbert and Zucker’s (1996) institutionalisation framework as a suitable conceptual framework on which to base the enquiry. The second phase (the focus of this paper) applied the findings from two case studies to adapt this framework (its stages and related factors) to fit process improvement contexts.

The paper presents an empirically and theoretically supported novel institutionalisation process for process improvement initiatives. The three stages of the institutionalisation process presented by Tolbert and Zucker (1996) have been respecified into four stages, explaining how process changes are institutionalised through “Planning”, “Implementation”, “Objectification” and “Sedimentation” (the original first stage, i.e. “Habitualisation” being divided into Planning and Implementation). Some newly identified Business Process Management (BPM) specific factors influencing the institutionalisation processes are also discussed and triangulated with the BPM literature.

The study contributes to the BPM literature by conceptualising and theorising the stages of institutionalisation of process improvement initiatives. In doing so, the study explicitly identifies and considers several key contextual factors that drive the stages of institutionalisation. Practitioners can use this to better manage process change and future researchers can use this framework to operationalise institutionalisation of process change.

This is the first research study that provides an empirically supported and clearly conceptualised understanding of the stages of institutionalising process improvement outcomes.

The purpose of this study is to benchmark the use of process improvement techniques among US health care organizations that won the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award.

The applications from 13 Baldrige award winning health care organizations were researched to determine which process improvement techniques were used most frequently to guide their operations.

The results from this study identify several best practices in process improvement techniques. Furthermore, the study pinpoints in which aspect of performance that a process improvement technique is most likely to be used.

Only applications from organizations winning the Baldrige award have been studied. The identity and application for organizations that do not win the award are not released to the public. Statistical analysis of the data is limited to the relatively small number (13) of award winners.

The results clearly show that there are certain process improvement techniques used by a majority of the Baldrige winners. It is not possible to guarantee that the use of these same techniques by other health care organizations will result in performance improvement, only that the winners used the techniques and have achieved a high level of performance. The results identify processes for further benchmarking studies.

The process improvement techniques identified in this study have been used by successful health care organizations. This information may be useful to other health care organizations when deciding on which process improvement techniques to pursue in order to improve their own performance. While the Baldrige award process has driven benchmarking efforts, this study uses the Baldrige process to identify benchmarking opportunities for process improvement in health care organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the mediator role that knowledge sharing plays between organisational culture, organisational structure, and technology infrastructure and process improvement in a knowledge management context in manufacturing enterprises operating in the food, beverage and textile industry.

An empirical study is conducted with a sample of 200 food, beverage and textile companies. Data are obtained by means of a survey questionnaire applied to general managers in each of the sample firms. The impact of the factors organisational culture, organisational structure and technology infrastructure on process improvement via knowledge sharing is assessed. Structural equation modelling and maximum likelihood estimation are applied to find the direction and strength of the relationships.

The main findings indicate the significant relationships between knowledge sharing and process improvement, between organisational culture and knowledge sharing, and between organisational structure and knowledge sharing. The relationship between technology infrastructure and knowledge sharing is found not to be significant.

The findings of the present study are limited to the food, beverage and textile industry. Future research could incorporate data from other manufacturing sectors or service companies.

This study provides practical guidance for general managers who wish to implement process improvement programmes.

Several authors have noted that there are few research studies concerning the interaction between each phase of knowledge management and total quality management practices. This study is interested in knowledge sharing and its impact on process improvement in a knowledge management context.

This research aims to examine the relationships among leadership and culture, human resources and process improvement in lean hospitals from the socio-technical perspective.

The survey instrument was developed from literature reviews, verified by experts and confirmatory factor analysis. Multiple responses were used to collect data from 473 care providers in 220 outpatient departments of Thai hospitals to improve reliability of the obtained data. Path analysis of structural equation modeling was applied to analyze the hypotheses.

It was found that human resources has a significant positive direct effect on process improvement. Leadership and culture not only has significant direct positive impacts on human resources and process improvement but also has a significant indirect positive impact on process improvement through human resources.

This is one of the first examples of research to present insights into the links between soft and hard factors of lean hospitals at strategic and operational levels.

This paper aims to demonstrate the need for a structured business process improvement effort needed while restructuring organisational processes within a construction company. Through the longitudinal study, the study also highlights the importance of a continuous improvement initiative to sustain such an improvement effort.

The research followed an action research and the case study approach using semi-structured interviews and group workshops within the case organisation. Overall, six departments were analysed, 35 interviews with senior and middle managers were conducted, existing business process documents were studied and processes were documented. The data were compiled using a process modelling software and Business Process Markup Notation methodology. Additionally, a longitudinal analysis following the completion of process modelling exercise was carried out over a period of eight years.

The overall study highlights the importance of business process management (BPM) for construction organisations. The case study also demonstrated that even smaller business units and its processes affected the overall value chain in a major way and the importance to analyse the process interdependencies between organisational units.

The main limitation of the research was that it is based on a single-case-study company based in the UK. More research is needed with other organisations with different work practices and culture and geographic location.

Primarily, the research outlines specific steps taken during a structured process improvement exercise in a construction company, including procedures for collecting data, developing process maps and analysis of data. The longitudinal study highlights the challenges in sustaining such an initiative. For practitioners, strengths and weaknesses of various process improvement methods and a detailed description of a BPM implementation can be used as a guideline for future projects. From a research point of view, the paper highlights the need for deeper and long-term analysis of such initiatives and the importance of immersion of researchers within the environment.

The paper provides deeper insights into the structured process improvement exercise within a construction company. Second and more importantly, the longitudinal study is one of its kind in the construction industry to shed light on the factors affecting sustainability of such initiatives.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a business management system that addresses the following issue: Lean Six Sigma, total quality management, and other process improvement efforts center on the execution of process improvement projects; however, often these projects (e.g. Lean Six Sigma Black Belt projects) are identified in silos and do not benefit the business as a whole, e.g. $125 million is reported saved, but nobody can find the money.

The paper “Where process‐improvement projects go wrong,” Wall Street Journal, January 25, 2010 (www.smartersolutions.com/blog/forrestbreyfogle/?p=2726) elaborates on the shortcomings of typical process improvement efforts by building an analog between process improvement programs and a spring's stress‐strain curve – stretching, yielding, and failing. To address the described issues, process improvement efforts need to be part of an overall enhanced business management system in order to have long‐lasting success. This structured organizational framework should integrate predictive scorecards with targeted strategies creation that blends analytics with innovation, which lead to the establishment of functional performance goals that pull for the creation of enterprise‐as‐a‐whole‐beneficial improvement projects, which positively impacts these target objectives.

The described nine‐step Integrated Enterprise Excellence (IEE) business management system provides the framework for achievement of these above‐described needs. The IEE system, for example, blends analytics with theory of constraints, competitive assessments, and economic environment so that created project work efforts have a whole‐system‐performance measurement benefit.

In Lean Six Sigma and Lean kaizen event programs, improvement projects are often selected from a brainstorming‐list of potential opportunities. Initial gains when starting such a deployment can be achieved; however, this effort typically stalls out and the process improvement teams are laid‐off when times get tough. The reason for this rough‐time downsizing is that the previous team process improvement project efforts were not, in the eyes of executives, expended in areas so that a significant overall enterprise benefit was achieved. IEE provides a business management system for addresses these issues so that business improvement efforts have a whole‐organization benefit.

The IEE system can be used by management to address the business management problems of the day, e.g. management issues that led to the financial crisis and the problems that Toyota is now experiencing.

Many who have studied the IEE system have said that this system provides a framework for how business should be run and should be taught in business schools.

Since the mid‐1980s, the subject of information systems (IS) integration and its role in business process improvement (BPI) has been of considerable interest to business managers and researchers. The present study examines the effects of IS integration on BPI. The moderating effects of industry type, information intensity of the industry, and time since the initiation of the existing program in the firm have also been analyzed. The data for the study were gathered through a survey of Fortune 500 US firms at divisional levels. The results of the study support the hypotheses that data integration and communication networks integration affect the dimensions of BPI. However, none of the moderators, except industry type, was found significantly affecting the relationships between networks integration and process improvement effect and customer focus.

The maintenance of process improvement programs within organizations is not an easy task. Some processes do not maintain the results achieved with the improvement project and again present low performance shortly after completion of the project. This paper aims to identify the socio-technical causes responsible for the loss of process performance after applying improvement projects, in order to support the mitigation of the problem.

A systematic review of the literature was carried out, which allowed the selection of 28 articles. The empirical stage used the benchmarking technique, along a large Brazilian mining company with an international standard of production and quality. This organization has been using improvement projects for more than ten years.

The research complements the literature regarding the prioritization of the 26 identified failures and the identification of seven new failure factors and two resources. Findings in this study can be an inspiration for other organizations, considering the similarity of methodological aspects of improvement projects since internationally standardized methodologies such as Six Sigma, Lean, Kaizen and 5S are used.

The research presented a proposal of guidelines that corroborate to the mitigation of loss of process performance after improvement project.