Generic Aspects of Performance Improvement: Comparative Case Studies in Lebanon

Abstract

The present paper investigates performance improvement in organizations from the perspective of generalizability. The objective is to examine generic aspects of organizational performance in different contexts. Abiding by a confirmatory approach, the research endeavored to bring change to the reality of two organizations by testing aspects of performance enhancement theory, namely management paradigms based on synchronized decentralization. The research finds evidence to confirm this paradigm and adds adaptation of procedures as a generic aspect of performance improvement. The framework is a comparative case study in applied research/intervention research using the socio-economic approach to management. The results support that synchronized decentralization and the subsequent adaptation of procedures yield performance improvement across various contexts. The main contributions of the paper are the transformations operated in the studied organizations and the confirmation of the underlying theory through case research.