Business improvement tools and techniques: a comparison across sectors and industries

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the awareness, usage, perceived effectiveness and potential future use of improvement tools and techniques via two sets of comparisons: between public and private sector organisations and between manufacturers and service organisations. The need for the study was driven by the current lack of understanding of the extent of improvement tools and techniques adoption on a global scale. A questionnaire survey of 453 respondents from over 20 countries was conducted and the quantitative data was analysed through use of the IBM SPSS software package. The study's findings indicated that there are no significant differences between both sets of organisations for the majority of improvement tools and techniques. However, this study has shown that public sector organisations are more likely to adopt some improvement tools and techniques in comparison to their private sector counterparts. Similarly, service organisations are also more likely to adopt some improvement tools and techniques than their manufacturing counterparts. These results contradict the conventional perception that improvement tools and techniques are used more often by the private sector and manufacturing organisations.

Management consultancy’s role in delivering lasting [triple bottom line] benefits

“…Interestingly, within this research only 13 per cent of respondents claimed to be experts (6 per cent for SMEs and 7 per cent for LEs), placing experience of best practices below awareness for specific tools and techniques. This fits with the rather general approach to improvement tools identified by some authors (Adebanjo et al 2010;Adebanjo et al 2015;Tickle et al 2015;Tickle et al 2016) suggests that consultants are intrinsically useful to organisations (Prahalad and Hamel, 1990;Bradley et al 2011), but not according to 25 per cent of the respondents who reported internal resistance to seeking external intervention. Reasons provided ranged from 'organisation culture too difficult to be understood by external resources' to 'People wanted to learn rather than to be taught how to do things'.…”

“…Organisations have adopted multiple improvement tools and techniques in order to be able to better respond to pressures on performance, grow their business and increase profitability (Adebanjo et al 2010;Adebanjo et al 2015;Tickle et al 2015;Tickle et al 2016). Research suggests long-term capacity development and more sustainable improvement happens when change and performance initiatives are carried out with external input (Done et al 2011;Tickle et al 2016).…”

“…A number of key themes require exploration in order to offer a cohesive perspective regarding demands on businesses and management's responses to these, on the assumption that overall organisational performance objectives remain as already stated. The current swathe of available operational improvement programmes includes business excellence models, Lean Management, Six Sigma, Total Quality Management and Business Process Engineering (Näslund 2008;Adebanjo et al 2015;Tickle et al 2015). Whilst linked to Ferdows and De Meyer's contention, such programmes mainly focus on functional rather than organisational improvement, seemingly therefore highlighting short-term improvement in favour of sustained long-term capacity development (Done et al 2011).…”

Prioritization of Six-Sigma project selection

“…In recent times, continuous improvement initiatives have gained increased popularity in many industry sectors across the globe (Tickle et al, 2015). This has led to increased level of research activity/investigations with a range of studies on various aspects of improvement strategies and their supporting projects.…”

Implementation of service systems on the shop-floor level in financial service companies. Empirical evidence from Australia and Germany

“…Research on shop-floor control of service processes is scarce (Smith, Karwan, and Markland 2007), while results from the related domain of improvement methods and techniques highlight important differences between the manufacturing and service sectors (Tickle et al 2015). A literature search on this topic reveals a limited number of prior studies.…”