Can Innovation and Improvement Coexist in world-class manufacturing? A dynamic capability approach

While the coexistence of improvement and innovation in world-class manufacturing is somehow taken for granted, literature has not yet provided an understanding about how this coexistence can be achieved at the plant level. Building on the notion of dynamic capability conceptualized as a bundle of strictly intertwined meta-routines and coupling different streams of literature, we advance and test a model that unpacks the underlying mechanisms of this coexistence. We find that a supportive organizational infrastructure creates a common organizational background for improvement and innovation while just-in-time (JIT) acts as a link between these two dynamic capabilities. The study raises important issues both for theory and for practice.