Purpose – Since Masaaki Imai coined the term Kaizen in the mid 1980s it has been regarded as a key element in the competitiveness of Japanese companies. However, even though Kaizen was defined by the author who created the term, writings by scholars and practitioners in the field exhibit a...

Purpose – In recent years, small family businesses in Mexico have come under enormous pressure from their external environment: this has resulted in serious problems affecting the running of their businesses, leading ultimately to a drop off in sales, customers and market share. Some have...

Purpose – The Gemba‐Kaizen approach is a key business process strategy employed by companies (multinationals also) to enhance their manufacturing performance. However, whilst there is significant research information available on implementing management systems in a sequential manner, there...

Purpose – Imai defined Kaizen as: “a means of continuing improvement in personal life, home life, social life, and working life. At the workplace, Kaizen means continuing improvement involving everyone – managers and workers alike”. According to Imai, Kaizen can take at least three...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a first exploratory overview of the Mediterranean system of innovation and present the results of interactive work with 25 innovation delegates from northern and southern Mediterranean countries. The study comes at a watershed for the Union for...

The assessment of managerial action can be viewed as an information tool for the improvement of management decision‐making processes. Such an assessment might serve to improve both the managerial actions directly assessed and other related organizational aspects. This research focuses on what...

Purpose – Interoperability standards are a crucial aspect in the development of B2B e‐business. The aim of this paper is to understand how standardisation evolves by analysing the interplay between activities and stakeholders within the process. Unlike most of the IS research that focuses on...

Peters and Waterman brought the concept of excellence into the conscious practice of organizations during the early 1980s. Theory has timidly followed afterwards. However, the concept existed before and it is broadly used nowadays. This article attempts to synthesize the evolution of excellence,...