Kaizen-Green. An opportunity for sustainable continuous improvement

Purpose – Organizations today are always looking to generate Green management mechanisms that allow their enterprises to generate environmentally focused products and/or services. At the same time, they apply and implement Kaizen initiatives (continuous improvement) to improve and innovate their day-to-day operations. Both initiatives share certain similarities in their operational practice. As such, the purpose of this article is to conduct a literature review of both the Green approach and the Kaizen philosophy. During this process, compatibilities, similarities and differences at the moment of implementation in organizations among both initiatives were looked for.
Design/methodology/approach – The employed methodology was a systematic literature review (SLR) of the said research topic. It’s worth mentioning that both academic and practitioner literature was used to analyze implementation cases from both approaches.
Findings – Findings reveal that both initiatives show certain convergent points, especially in a problem solving solution centered in the PDCA cycle. Likewise, there are some key similarities in both Kaizen and Green initiatives that can generate a unique and united framework.
Research limitations/implications– Of course, the limitation is that it is a theoretical analysis, but future research will take into account empirical work.
Practical implications– The research will provide shcholars to develop a deeper and richer knowledge on the simultaneous deployment of green and Kaizen improvement iniatives and help managers to create practical solutions.
Originality/value – This research could be one of the first contributions that unite both Kaizen and Green management initiatives. Besides the potential benefits to applied both approaches.

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Green Management, Kaizen Philosophy, Literature Review