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The role of experience in six sigma project success: An empirical analysis of improvement projects
Author(s) -
Easton George S.,
Rosenzweig Eve D.
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
journal of operations management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.649
H-Index - 191
eISSN - 1873-1317
pISSN - 0272-6963
DOI - 10.1016/j.jom.2012.08.002
Subject(s) - six sigma , context (archaeology) , team effectiveness , team composition , psychology , knowledge management , project team , team learning , empirical research , teamwork , business , marketing , management , computer science , cooperative learning , pedagogy , paleontology , philosophy , open learning , epistemology , lean manufacturing , teaching method , economics , biology
Recent learning‐by‐doing research highlights the importance of examining multiple measures of experience and their relationship to the performance of work teams. Our paper studies the role of individual experience, organizational experience, team leader experience, and experience working together on a team (team familiarity) in the context of improvement teams. To do so, we analyze successful and failed six sigma improvement team projects at a Fortune 500 consumer products manufacturer with multiple business groups. Such improvement project teams focus on deliberate learning, which differs from the primary focus of work teams. Our analysis uses archival data generated by these improvement project teams over a six year time span. Of the four experience variables we study, we find that team leader experience exhibits the strongest relationship with project success, followed by organizational experience. Further, in contrast to prior‐related research on work teams, we find no relationship between individual experience or team familiarity and project success beyond that explained by team leader and organizational experience. These results suggest that a well‐developed and deployed structured problem‐solving process—characteristic of effective six sigma deployments—may reduce the importance of team familiarity in the context of improvement teams.