The influence of operational excellence on the culture and agility of organizations: evidence from industry

What is it about?

Increasingly unstable business environments have led to a growing interest in how to develop and maintain operational excellence in the face of continued and disruptive change. However, this interest has, so far, been advanced with little empirical evidence to support the corresponding predictions. In this work, we present the conclusions from a set of studies carried out in organizations operating in technical and technological industries, and share the first practical evidence that continued focus and optimization of operations, with the right cultural alignment, helps organizations survive and thrive in increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous environments. We assessed the capabilities of these organizations in terms of operational excellence maturity and its impact on the organizational culture and organizational agility. Results show the importance of operational excellence either in developing or expanding organizational agility capabilities while reinforcing the cruciality of an excellence-oriented culture to sustain these efforts over time. This work aims at breaking new ground in research by presenting a novel approach that brings together management, engineering, and organizational behavior. It focuses on the understanding of organizational dynamics in an era of technological change, upholding the importance of organizational agility and of the cultural paradigm in the management of organizations.

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