Inhospitable Cultures and Continuous Improvement

Corporate culture plays a key role in the adoption and maintenance of a continuous improvement environment. Yet the role that culture does play and its nature tend to be overlooked or simplified so as to be almost meaningless. Overviews aspects of corporate culture and uses a case study of a professional company to show how they went about developing a continuous improvement environment. The key lessons from the case study include the need for “ownership” of jobs, self‐esteem as a driving force for continuous improvement, importance of activities related to customers, achievement requiring teamwork, function replaced by process and understanding through involvement in quality improvement programmes.