Human Resource Management for Continuous Improvement

This paper investigates the relationship between HRM practices and Continuous Improvement
(CI) activities in order to gain an understanding of how the HRM function may be
utilized to improve CI implementation success, and consequently, company performance. The
paper begins with a brief review of the HRM and CI literature and then presents statistical
analyses of data collected from the Continuous Improvement Network Survey (2003), which
demonstrate that HRM has a significant effect on CI behaviour and company performance,
with the strongest relationship between HRM, CI and performance occurring when companies
align their CI activities with their strategic objectives and use systems, procedures and processes
to measure the results of their CI activities.