Change and innovation in modern manufacturing practices: An expert panel survey of UK companies

The aim of this research was to examine the change and innovation capabilit ies of U.K. manufacturing companies across a range different sectors, and w ith regard to a variety of modern manufacturing practices. This was achieve d by interviewing experts drawn from research, consultancy, professional bo dies, and manufacturing companies. The findings indicate that there are opt imistic signs for believing that U.K. companies are improving their change capabilities (e.g., project planning, selling and communicating change, con sulting end users). More pessimistically, it was found that companies could develop their change capabilities further in a number of key areas (e.g., strategic and systemic thinking, end user participation, management of lear ning and expertise, evaluating change). It is also suggested that companies are particularly poor at learning from their experiences of managing chang e, and that this inhibits the further development of change and innovation capabilities. (C) 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.