An Empirical Investigation Of The Relationship Between Six Sigma Practices And Organisational Innovation

In current economic environment,in order to sustain competitiveness,firms need to enhance their capability of creativity and innovation to provide better products and services to customers in a faster speed.The critical role of innovation in developing and improving products and services and advancing the business for better performance receive increasing amount of attention from researchers and practitioners.Particularly,research studies look into how a firm's innovation capability can be affected by process improvement practices,such as Total Quality Management and business process reengineering.Six Sigma is a process improvement program that is increasingly adopted in industry to pursue continuous improvement in process management and product development.Both Six Sigma and innovation play key roles in improving competitiveness.While there is abundant research on Six Sigma and innovation from many perspectives,rigorous empirical research investigating the impact of Six Sigma on organisational innovation has been limited.Moreover,there have been debates about whether Six Sigma is beneficial for organisational innovation.The purpose of this thesis is to explore the relationships between Six Sigma practices and organisational innovation through an empirical invesitigation from Chinese Six Sigma firms.Based on previous research,this thesis suggests five practices that are commonly identified as critical components for Six Sigma implementation,including top management support and commitment,Six Sigma role structure,information & data system,Six Sigma structured improvement procedure,and Six Sigma focus on metrics.Organisational innovation can be categorized into three types: product innovation,process innovation and administrative innovation.This thesis first seeks to explore the relationships between Six Sigma practices and different types of organisational innovation,and then examines the contingency effects of three contextual factors – firm size,ownership,and Six Sigma duration– on the relationship of Six Sigma and innovation.Empirical data were collected from 249 firms in China which had implemented Six Sigma as a formal program in their organisation.Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationship between Six Sigma practices and innovation.Multi-group analysis was performed to assess the moderating effects of contextual factors.The results show that Six Sigma role structure has a positive effect on the application of administrative innovation,and Six Sigma focus on metrics facilitates product innovation,process innovation and administrative innovation.It is also found that Six Sigma duration is the significant contextual factor that has a moderating effect on the relationships between Six Sigma practices and innovation.This thesis proposes a framework between Six Sigma practices and organisational innovation.Empirical data from Chinese firms confirm the proposed hypotheses,which contributes to enrich the research between Six Sigma practices and innovation.What's more,it helps verify the contingency perspective of quality management implementation by identifying the contextual factors that influence the effectiveness of Six Sigma on innovation.The findings of this study provide theoretical support for the implementation of Six Sigma in companies,as well as practical impliacation for improving organisational innovation capacity through Six Sigma practices.