The impact of culture on best practice production / operations management

Abstract

Significant work has been completed in arriving at what have been put forward as `best practices' for a variety of facets of production/operations management (POM). Organizations are becoming global in their operations. In this environment, there is a desire to learn from this 'proven' best practice and to use the generic ideas, concepts and techniques 'world-wide'. However, it is becoming apparent from a range of fragmented evidence that 'best practices' developed and successful in one context are not necessarily directly transferable to a comparable alternative. More detailed examination suggests that national culture has a significant role to play in determining the precise nature of a best practice in POM, and how universal it might be in its application. This paper examines structures within which to view facets of POM in order to identify one that will facilitate exploration of cultural issues. There follows an identification of what might be considered to be an appropriate range of cultural dimensions along which POM best practices may be considered. A review of the evidence from the literature of cultural impacts on aspects of POM is presented. This is used to support the development of a generic framework to examine this interface more comprehensively.