Change and innovation in modern manufacturing practices: An expert panel survey of U.K. companies

The aim of this research was to examine the change and innovation capabilities of U.K. manufacturing companies across a range different sectors, and with regard to a variety of modern manufacturing practices. This was achieved by interviewing experts drawn from research, consultancy, professional bodies, and manufacturing companies. The findings indicate that there are optimistic signs for believing that U.K. companies are improving their change capabilities (e.g., project planning, selling and communicating change, consulting end users). More pessimistically, it was found that companies could develop their change capabilities further in a number of key areas (e.g., strategic and systemic thinking, end user participation, management of learning and expertise, evaluating change). It is also suggested that companies are particularly poor at learning from their experiences of managing change, and that this inhibits the further development of change and innovation capabilities. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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