The effect of continuous improvement tools on organizational performance of the Dubai police: the mediating role of innovation culture

The main objective of this study was to investigate the interaction effects of continuous improvement tools on the organisational performance of the Dubai Police. Specifically, it aims to investigate the mediating influence of innovation culture on the relationship between Six Sigma, Kaizen, benchmarking, and organisational performance. The motivation of this study was driven by the inconsistent findings related to the relationships between Six Sigma, Kaizen, benchmarking, and organisational performance. Due to inconsistent results, various propositions have emerged, pointing to the need to investigate possible mediating variables that could explain the inconsistencies. For that purpose, this study employed systems theory and the resource- based view theory to synchronize the possible relationships among the variables in the conceptual framework. A survey questionnaire was used, and the questionnaires were distributed randomly to 338 sections of the Dubai Police. Of the 252 returned questionnaires, 245 were useable for analysis. PLS-SEM was employed to analyse both direct and indirect relationships among the variables of the study. The findings demonstrated that Six Sigma and innovation culture are significant predictors of organisational performance. It also showed the mediating effect of innovation culture on the relationship between Six Sigma, Kaizen, benchmarking, and organisational performance, supporting the theoretical premises. This study contributes theoretically by bridging the current gap in studying Six Sigma, Kaizen and benchmarking in policing field and practically by contributing to managers in the Dubai Police about the importance using these tools to affect organizational performance positively and also the significant role of innovation culture for implementing these tools successfully.