Organizational learning and continuous quality improvement in an automotive manufacturing organization.

Abstract

Quality, improvement, and learning have gained prominence in both the motor vehicle industry and the organizational research community during the last decade. One of the Big Three automotive manufacturers in particular, 'Pioneer Motor Company,' has been actively engaged in learning to continuously improve the quality of its processes, products, and services. This study examines the Pioneer case, taking the perspective that a continuous quality improvement (CQI) approach represents a normative theory of organizational learning. Nested within the concept of organizational change, organizational learning is a process through which knowledge about action-outcome relationships develops and may then modify collective behavior. I proposed that different types of quality practices engage different kinds of learning, and this explains differential success in quality performance across Pioneer's organizational units. To examine quality improvement practices and processes, survey data were collected from 935 upper-middle managers during three years (1990, 1991, 1992). Additional data were collected during 1993 through semi-structured interviews, managerial stories of successful and failed quality improvement efforts, and observations. Great variety in quality activities and outcomes across the 68 business units sampled prompted the following research question: What variables intervene between continuous quality improvement practices and performance outcomes? Specifically, vicarious and direct forms of organizational learning were investigated as mediators of quality performance. Multivariate statistical analysis identified a subset of elements that contributed to CQI within units that had the highest vs. the lowest overall quality improvement survey scores. Empirical and theoretical profiles describing CQI and organizational learning across 13 units were developed, linked to qualitative and quantitative data, and analyzed for congruence. The results indicated that: organizational learning mediates the relationship between quality activities and results, favorable CQI results are generated more by blending vicarious and direct learning processes than by relying solely on one or the other, and successful CQI may be connected to learning from vicarious failure as well as vicarious and/or direct success. This multi-method approach contributed to inductively developing a conceptual framework of organizational learning and continuous quality improvement that is useful for theory and practice.