Dynamic capabilities: top executive audits andhoshin kanriat Nissan South Africa

Hoshin Kanri Process: A Review and Bibliometric Analysis on the Connection of Theory and Practice

The review assesses the Hoshin Kanri process from the point of view of theory and practice implementations in different organizations. There are several adaptations of Hoshin Kanri and a wide range of tools used in each organization. This review aims to determine which and how companies have implemented the afore-mentioned methodology into their strategic management. The PRISMA statement was the framework for the present research. The structure for this study was obtained through a review of articles from two of the most important databases (Scopus and Web of Science). The review focuses on three parts: the theoretical basis of the methodology, a bibliometric overview of the selected articles, and practical insight into the implementation of Hoshin Kanri within the case-study organizations. Since the study’s purpose is to determine not only the companies where Hoshin Kanri was implemented but also the reasons and results of those implementations, therefore, 26 journal articles covering detailed implementations were selected.

Impact of Hoshin Kanri on lean management: a case study in the food retail industry

Purpose

This study aims to describe how the Hoshin Kanri (HK) strategic methodology facilitates implementation of lean management (LM), achieving greater integration of the strategic and operational levels, resulting in higher performance level.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors conducted an in-depth case study of a top-10 Spanish food retail company with experience in HK and LM. First, the authors conducted 17 semi-structured interviews with the management team. Second, the authors analyzed all minutes from meetings of the key management entities for HK monitoring over a period of 3 years (2016–2019). Third, the authors evaluated the reports and key scorecards for the same period. Finally, authors visited the operating facilities and attended multiple team management meetings.

Findings

This study demonstrates that deploying HK creates the strategic ecosystem for operations management that facilitates successful implementation of LM. By sharing common cultural concepts, both methodologies generate faster transformation of the organization and thus push it towards its strategic objectives with more determination and better performance.

Originality/value

The lack of strategic alignment is one of the most important reasons for LM failure. Although HK is a strategic methodology that facilitates this alignment, a gap exists in the literature on the benefits of HK for implementation of continuous improvement initiatives such as LM. Our research shows how HK enables a participative connection between the strategic and operational areas of the firm that reinforces the fundamental elements of LM. Employee involvement, widespread use of plan-do-check-act (PDCA) methodology and multidisciplinary work (among other effects) make HK a key element for successful implementation of LM.

Improving high lean team performance through aligned behaviour-value patterns and coactive vicarious learning-by-doing

Purpose

Why are some lean workfloor teams able to improve their already high performance, over time, and others not? By studying teams' and leaders' behaviour-value patterns, this abductive field study uncovers a dynamic capability at the team level.

Design/methodology/approach

Various methods were employed over three consecutive years to thoroughly examine five initially high-performing lean workfloor teams, including their leaders. These methods encompassed micro-behavioural coding of 59 h of film footage, surveys, individual and group interviews, participant observation and archival data, involving objective and perceptual team-performance indicators. Two of the five teams continued to improve and perform highly.

Findings

Continuously improving high lean team performance is found to be associated with (1) team behaviours such as frequent performance monitoring, information sharing, peer support and process improvement; (2) team leaders who balance, over time, task- and relations-oriented behaviours; (3) higher-level leaders who keep offering the team face-to-face support, strategic clarity and tangible resources; (4) these three actors' endorsement of self-transcendence and openness-to-change work values and alignment, over time, with their behaviours; and (5) coactive vicarious learning-by-doing as a “stable collective activity pattern” among team, team leader, and higher-level leadership.

Originality/value

Since lean has been undertheorised, the authors invoked insights from organisational behaviour and management theories, in combination with various fine- and coarse-grained data, over time. The authors uncovered actors' behaviour-value patterns and a collective learning-by-doing pattern that may explain continuous lean team performance improvement. Four theory-enriching propositions were developed and visualised in a refined model which may already benefit lean practitioners.

Identification of the Dynamic Capabilities Ecosystem—A Systems Thinking Perspective

An in-depth look at the extant literature of dynamic capabilities (DCs) shows that the focus has been on the development, justification, and validation of individual DCs through both conceptual and empirical methods. We argue that studying DCs in isolation may not offer a complete practical meaning. Organizations being complex systems, multiple combinations of capabilities and their interrelationships (as a DC system) lead to a sustained competitive advantage, and this effect cannot be attributed to a single DC in isolation. Through this article, we present a system theoretic view of DCs and subsequently propose the concept of a DC ecosystem using a systems thinking perspective. We use the logical reasoning approach of justificationism to present the associated propositions. We conclude with a discussion of managerial implications and suggestions for future research.

On the integration of manufacturing strategy: deconstructing Hoshin Kanri

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to show that Hoshin Kanri has the potential to integrate the operations strategy literature into a coherent structure. Hoshin Kanri’s planning process is typically described as a top-down cascading of goals, starting with the senior management’s goals and moving to the lowest organizational level. The authors argue that this misrepresents a firm’s actual cognitive processes in practice because it implies reasoning from the effects to the cause, and assumes a direct causal relationship between what the customer wants and what is realizable by the system.

Design/methodology/approach

This study is conceptual, based on abductive reasoning and the literature.

Findings

The actual strategic thought process executed in an organization consists of three iterative processes: (i) a translation process that derives the desired customer attributes from customer/stakeholder data, (ii) a process of causal inference that predicts realizable customer attributes from a possible system design and (iii) an integrative process of strategic choices whereby (i) and (ii) are aligned. Each element relies on different cognitive processes (logical relation, causal relation and choice).

Research limitations/implications

By aligning the thought and planning processes, the competing concepts of manufacturing strategy are integrated into a coherent structure.

Practical implications

Different techniques have to be applied for each of the three elements. As each element relies on different cognitive processes (logical relation, causal relation and choice), the use of unifying tools (e.g. in the form of matrices, as often presented in the literature) is inappropriate.

Originality/value

This is the first study to focus on the thought processes underpinning manufacturing strategy.

Hoshin Kanri and A3: a proposal for integrating variability into the policy deployment process

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology to support the Hoshin Kanri (HK) process taking into account the variance of senior managers’ perspective regarding the relationships among objectives, key performance indicators and continuous improvement (CI) projects.

Design/methodology/approach

A four-step methodology incorporates the A3 report into the HK, whose deployment was weighted by the variability among managers’ perception about the importance of each decision. This methodology was applied in a market-leader Mexican auto parts manufacturing company that is undergoing a Lean Manufacturing (LM) implementation.

Findings

The results indicate that the proposed methodology provides an easier approach to consolidate different perspectives and weight the importance of CI projects. Moreover, it minimizes the possibility of managerial conflicts or the influence of a determined senior manager on others’ opinions during the deployment and prioritization.

Practical implications

This work may be of great interest to managers, consultants and professionals who deal with the implementation of LM and wish to prioritize the importance of CI projects within the perspective of HK.

Originality/value

HK provides a systematic approach to integrate strategic management with daily routine management through an adequate deployment of organizational policies to all levels. However, companies usually struggle with several issues such as the style of senior managers and consensus establishment among different opinions, which emphasizes the relevance of the proposed methodology in this study.

Dynamic supply chain capabilities

Purpose

This paper positions market sensing, supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability as a coherent cluster of dynamic supply chain capabilities. The purpose of this paper is to understand how dynamic supply chain capabilities interrelate and their effect on supply chain ambidexterity.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a survey of Pakistani manufacturing firms, a theoretically-derived model was tested in a structural equation model.

Findings

The results of the study show that a market-sensing capability is an antecedent of supply chain agility and supply chain adaptability. Furthermore, supply chain agility, directly, and supply chain adaptability, indirectly, affect supply chain ambidexterity. Supply chain agility, therefore, mediates the relationship between supply chain adaptability and supply chain ambidexterity.

Originality/value

The contribution of this study lies in: first, identifying dynamic capability clusters relevant for achieving supply chain ambidexterity; second, evaluating performance implications of dynamic capabilities in the supply chain, specifically supply chain agility and adaptability; and third, proposing a unique measurement of supply chain ambidexterity in the light supply chain theory, and empirically evaluating the relationship between dynamic capabilities and supply chain ambidexterity.

Identification of guidelines for Hoshin Kanri initiatives

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a set of guidelines to be used for diagnosing and (re)designing organizational systems based on Hoshin Kanri – a management framework that is recognized for building the link between strategy and business execution.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-step approach was used in this research work. A systematic literature review (SLR) was used to find relevant references related to Hoshin Kanri that could serve as sources for recommendations. After completing the SLR, content analysis was used to define the recommendations and analyze them, deriving a set of guidelines.

Findings

A collection of recurring topics was identified through content analysis. These topics can be interpreted as central aspects for Hoshin Kanri application. Topics were eventually categorized and one guideline was developed for each one of the categories, which resulted in a total of 23 guidelines. Guidelines were grouped in two dimensions (context and process) and also according to their central aspect (organizational culture, capabilities, focus, alignment, integration and review).

Originality/value

Although Hoshin Kanri has been widely applied in Japan and also in large companies over the past 50 years, it is not as widely explored in research papers as other frameworks. Literature often focuses on Hoshin Kanri only as a process and not as an organization-wide holistic system. There are few empirical studies about its conceptual assumptions and practical implications and no systematization of the main aspects that ensure the effective application of Hoshin Kanri in a universal manner.

The effects of pollution prevention on performance

Purpose

As pressure for companies to improve their environmental performance has intensified in recent years, research attention has shifted away from establishing a link between environmental practices and performance towards consideration of other factors that might facilitate performance improvements. The purpose of this paper is to: first, to investigate whether internal support processes interact with pollution prevention by positively moderating the relationship between pollution prevention and environmental performance; and, second, to assess whether the relationship between pollution prevention and cost performance is mediated by environmental performance.

Design/methodology/approach

It uses a cross-sectional survey of 1,200 UK-based food processing firms to gather information on environmental practices and performance. Regression analysis was conducted on a sample of 149 responding firms to assess the hypothesised relationships.

Findings

Support was found for two of the four moderated relationships hypothesised namely, suggesting that internal support processes support the environmental performance of some pollution prevention practices. Strong support for a mediated relationship between pollution prevention, environmental performance and cost performance was provided by the results.

Originality/value

This study provides an original contribution to the literature on the performance outcomes of environmental practices by considering a number indirect relationships between environmental practices and performance. This has implications for the interpretation of the relationship between environmental practices and performance.

Multi-plant improvement programmes: a literature review and research agenda

Purpose

– To advance the productivity of all plants in the network, multinational corporations develop and deploy multi-plant improvement programmes. In this paper, the authors systematically review and synthesise the emerging literature on multi-plant improvement programmes. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

– Through a systematic manual search, the authors examine 15 top journals from operations management, general management and international business literature in the time span between 1998 and 2011.

Findings

– The authors found 30 papers that specifically deal with operational improvement programmes in a multi-plant international setting, of which only nine take a headquarter perspective. This low number contrasts sharply with the magnitude and importance of such programmes in industry. The authors discuss key dimensions that explain how multi-plant improvement programmes result in the adopting, adapting, acting or avoiding of programme practices in subsidiaries and propose a related research agenda.

Research limitations/implications

– The authors affirm that a new field is in the making, with IJOPM as the leading professional journal. Further empirical research is called for, but particular methodological caution must be paid to the phenomenon of acting in subsidiaries.

Originality/value

– No coherent stream of research has addressed multi-plant improvement programmes. This paper represents a focused review that supports the further development of the field.