The role of organisational motivation and coordination in continuous improvement implementations: an empirical research of process improvement project success

The paper aims to elicit the understanding of process improvement (PI) project success by researching the effects of organisational–motivation and coordination in continuous improvement (CI) implementations in the financial services sector. The data analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM) comes from a sample of 198 survey respondents in financial service organisations that have implemented CI. This research shows that a strong organisational motivation is driving the embeddedness of PI methodology in, and alignment with the CI implementation of, the organisation and thus affecting PI project success. In addition, central coordination is found to affect the alignment of the organisation to the CI implementation activities and objectives and affects PI project success. These findings show how the organisational level constructs of organisational–motivation and coordination affect PI project success following the mediating constructs of alignment, embeddedness, and routinisation specifically in the context of financial services. Thus, the work provides a better understanding of how organisational level drivers affect the organisational context of PI projects and consequently affect PI project success. There is little empirical research on determinants of PI project success. Our work explains how factors in the organisational context in which PI projects take place are affecting project outcome. Keywords: continuous improvement; process improvement; project success; organisational motivation; organisational coordination.