Organizational culture and Lean Six Sigma: A case study

This qualitative descriptive case study explored the influence of the alignment between organizational culture and Lean Six Sigma on business performance. Data collected via semi-structured interviews and self-reported performance data collected from 38 study participants who were team members in process improvement projects was coded using NVivo 2.0 qualitative software. Themes that emerged covered aspects of business performance, social systems, and technical systems. The results revealed the importance of aligning organizational culture, an aspect of social systems, and the Lean Six Sigma technical system to enable business performance improvement. The study revealed that alignment though important was not sufficient; establishing dual optimization of social and technical systems resulted in optimized business performance. Leaders who understood the importance of organizational culture when deploying Lean Six Sigma were more likely to improve business performance than those who focused on the technical aspects of the methodology.