Continuous Improvement and Organisational Excellence in UAE Government Entities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47604/ijsm.3994Keywords:
Continuous Improvement, Organisational Excellence, Employee Involvement, Public Value, UAE GovernmentAbstract
Purpose: This study examines how continuous improvement (CI) is applied in participating United Arab Emirates (UAE) government entities and how formal CI adoption relates to employee involvement, internal-process efficiency, service quality, training and resources, and perceived contribution to organisational excellence. It addresses the risk that entities appear compliant with the Government Excellence Model (GEM 2.1) while lacking the internal capability for continuous learning and frontline problem solving.
Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional survey design was adopted. Data were collected from 414 employees, almost all working in UAE government entities, through a self-administered online questionnaire distributed by non-probability convenience and snowball sampling. Because respondent-level data, scale anchors and validation statistics were unavailable, the aggregated survey results were analysed descriptively using percentages, together with means and standard deviations reconstructed from the response distributions. Results are presented in tables and figures.
Findings: Formal CI adoption was high (95.7%), as were positive ratings of internal-process efficiency (92.2%), training and resources (94.2%) and service quality (94.9%). However, employee involvement (M = 3.03) and perceived contribution to organisational excellence (M = 3.10) clustered at the midpoint of five-point scales. The pattern indicates a gap between formally deployed CI programmes and the employee participation through which improvement becomes embedded in daily work.
Unique Contribution to Theory, Practice and Policy: The study integrates Public Value Theory, Dynamic Capabilities Theory and Institutional Theory into an adoption–participation–excellence interpretation of public-sector CI. For practice, it recommends moving beyond formal programmes to regular CI skills development, protected time for employee participation, evidence-based benefit reviews and public-value measurement aligned with GEM 2.1. For policy, it suggests that excellence assessments should examine routine learning and employee participation, not only the number of projects.
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