Advantages And Disadvantages Of Kaizen Theory

Behavioral Theory (Human Relational Approach)

At late 80’s there was research continuing regarding the common organizational problems such as interaction and motivation of the individual employees. Management theories which are developed in classical period don’t have effective solutions for such situations. So that a new group lead to grow as “Behavioral School”, to find effective answers for such problems.

This behavioral theory is known as “Human Relational Approach” because there central idea is addressing the human relationship with the organization. This school believe that, organization can improve their productivity by understanding human behavioral factors like motivation, conflicts, expectations, and group and team behavior.

In classical theories, the theorist viewed employees as machines but in this approach employees are consider as individual and resource. Elton Mayo is a leading researcher who do a lot to build this theory. Elton Mayo and his colleagues did several researches and experiments, which

1. The companies considering to adopt Kaizen principles need to bring about a massive change to their corporate culture as Kaizen requires a change in attitudes of both employees and management. This is sometimes very difficult as it is hard to change their attitudes and the initial problems created can be very bad for business overall. For instance, companies need to have a very open style of communication in order to put this management style into practice.

2. Kaizen costing is criticised as a tool which creates ambiguity between employees and managers. Since Kaizen goals are changed every month, employees may find it difficult to adjust to the frequent changes of targets. However there can be counter arguments that the changes are gradual even though they are frequent.

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