In an increasingly dynamic environment where change seems to be the only constant feature, operational excellence programmes are often used to achieve improved performance results. However, the capacity of such approaches to make organisations successful in the long term is yet to be demonstrated. Operational excellence should not be seen as an approach to promote change, but rather to provide tools and framing for people in the organisation to deal with it. Our literature-based theory is that the relationships of operational excellence with both organisational culture and agility have the potential for further integration in the promotion of long-term, sustainable operational excellence initiatives. To do so, such initiatives need to look beyond simple cultural fit and work to promote a more agile behaviour and a cultural capacity to deal with constant change. If these conditions are met, the sustainability of operational excellence should be achieved, with organisations being able to strive in the long term with the promotion of organisational agility capabilities and an adaptable culture. The objective of this paper is to sustain this theory building, proposing the research questions that will help us understand the relationships and integration between the concepts of operational excellence, organisational agility and organisational culture.

Click on the article title to read more.

Purpose: In the past few years, management systems implementation and certification has become a common practice among different types of organizations. In this context, quality management systems certification, according to the ISO 9001 standard is in the spotlight, due to over than 1.000.000 certified organizations by the end of 2009. Quality management systems can be integrated with an increasing variety of other subsystems implemented according to other standards, including environmental systems, health and safety, social responsibility, R&D, risk, or human resources, and subsystems raised from specific standards designed for specific activity sectors (HACCP, automotive or aeronautics, medical devices, pharmaceuticals and software). Due to this evolution, careful attention should be taken on how these different subsystems have been and should be articulated, harmonized and integrated. Thus, this paper intends to approach different strategies to achieve integration, with several levels of intensity, depth and authenticity between the different subsystems, and report some final recommendations related with good practices assuring the efficiency and effectiveness of the integration process.Design/methodology/approach: A case study methodology has supported this research. Three case studies were conducted on Portuguese companies that have an integrated quality, environmental and safety management system.Findings: If the companies' strategy is to implement more than one management system, there is a clear advantage of doing it supported on an integrated approach, avoiding the development of organizational “islands” related to each subsystem. This organizational “archipelago” structure is completely far way from any global optimized solution, based on a holistic perspective.Originality/value: Based on the conclusions that we were able to find out, this paper is an important contribution to the integrated management systems research area, because it states different integration approaches and levels of integration and what are the features that characterize each one of those approaches and levels.