BRINGING JAPANESE CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT APPROACHES TO US MANUFACTURING - THE ROLES OF PROCESS ORIENTATION AND COMMUNICATIONS

Continuous improvement (CI) has played a key role in Japan's quality m anagement. U.S. companies have begun to adopt CI in recent years. This paper studies the implementation of CI in seven U.S. manufacturing co mpanies. We view values as the core concept of culture that impacts CI effectiveness. Using both qualitative and quantitative data with a sa mple of seven companies, we observe empirically a relationship between process-oriented values and CI effectiveness. We also find that commu nications involving workers is strongly associated with CI effectivene ss. Finally, we find an association between process orientation and co mmunication frequency, and argue that communications act as an interve ning variable between process orientation and effectiveness.