How can organizational culture affect improvement?
■ An organization’s ability to improve its operations performance depends to a large extent on
its ‘culture’, that is ‘the pattern of shared basic assumptions . . . that have worked well enough
to be considered valid’. A receptive organizational culture that encourages a constant search
for improved ways to do things can encourage improvement.
■ According to Bessant and Caffyn there are specific abilities, behaviours and actions which
need to be consciously developed if improvement is to sustain over the long term.
■ Many of the abilities and behaviours related to an improvement culture relate to learning in
some way. The learning process is important because it encourages, facilitates and exploits
the learning that occurs during improvement. This involves two types of learning, single- and
double-loop learning.
– Single-loop learning occurs when there is repetitive and predictable link between cause and
effect.
– Double-loop learning questions the fundamental objectives, service or even the underlying
culture of the operation.