Developing a Pre-scale for Evaluating Supervisors’ Directive Style in Continuous Improvement Environments

Abstract

The level of workers' commitment and participation has a huge impact on the success of continuous improvement initiatives. One of the non-written duties of middle managers is creating a trust-culture that enhances commitment and participation, which can be achieved with the appropriate directive style. In this paper, we present a pre-scale of four dimensions and fifty-five middle managers' behaviors that encourage employee commitment towards and participation in continuous improvement activities. The list has been developed putting together the opinions of operators and supervisors, as well as businessmen, university professors and consultants.