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This Section: Monitor, Report, Evaluate, Improve (MREI)
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Monitor, Report, Evaluate to Improve (MREI) - Continuous Improvement
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A philosophy, organizational commitment and a well-organized plan for continuous improvement (CI) at all levels in an organization should underpin its various monitoring, reporting, evaluating to improve (MREI) practices. The CI concept originated in Japan after the end of the Second World War. It gained massive popularity in manufacturing and has gradually been adopted by the education, health and other public sector organizations. Similar terms and elaborate rating systems/organizational checklists have been developed under similar titles such as Total Quality Management. The over-arching idea is that organizations should establish a culture or work environment where employees continuously improve their practices towards the mission of their organization. Continuous Improvement should seek to improve all elements of an organization—processes, tools, products, services and more. Making sustainable change takes time and involves collective effort; is context specific; and requires constant adaptation, data collection, and learning. Since defining what is meant by "good" or "poor" quality is often a subjective process, especially in organizations that are focused on intangibles such as "well-being" rather than the production of goods, profits or easily measured medical/physical results, the continuous improvement discussions should include the ends as well as the means. In loosely coupled systems such as schools where "command & control" style decision-making is not effective, the CI process will depend on the engagement and intrinsic motivation of employees at all levels.
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A philosophy, organizational commitment and a well-organized plan for continuous improvement at all levels in an organization should underpin its various monitoring, reporting, evaluating to improve (MREI) practices. The CI concept originated in Japan after the end of the Second World War. It gained massive popularity in manufacturing and has gradually been adopted by the education, health and other public sector organizations. Similar terms and elaborate rating systems/organizational checklists have been developed under similar titles such as Total Quality Management. The over-arching idea is that organizations should establish a culture or work environment where employees continuously improve their practices towards the mission of their organization.
A leading CI proponent in the private sector, McKinsey & Company has noted that "Continuous improvement is an ongoing effort to improve all elements of an organization—processes, tools, products, services, etc. Sometimes those improvements are big, often they are small. But what’s most important is they’re frequent." The Institute of Education Sciences within education department of the US Government has noted that "Continuous improvement is based on the principles that making sustainable change takes time and involves collective effort; is context specific; and requires constant adaptation, data collection, and learning Continuous improvement engages key players in a system to focus on a specific problem of practice and, through a series of iterative cycles, identify and test change practices (new approaches, tools, or strategies used to address the problem), make predictions, collect data about the change practices, and study the potential influence of those change practices on outcomes of interest Through these cycles the members of the system build their capacity to test proposed change practices; refine those change practices based on evidence; and increase the scale, scope, and spread of a change practice over time. A Canadian discussion of continuous quality improvement in health promotion reminds us that "Quality is defined in a variety of ways. While there is some agreement that ‘quality embodies notions of efficiency, effectiveness and consumer satisfaction’, the fact remains that definitions of quality are subjective and depend on who is doing the defining. Further, criteria for ‘quality’ depend on whether the production of concrete goods is at the heart of an endeavour, or whether intangibles such as ‘well being’ are of central importance". Sources
This summary was first posted in September 2021 as a "first draft" version. The following individuals or organizations have contributed to the development of this series of MREI topics; Albert Lee, Christine Beyer, Nancy Hudson, Candace Currie, Vivian Barnekow,Said Arnaout,Suleiman El Shehri, Raj’a Omar, Faten Ben Abdel Aziz, Lloyd J. Kolbe, Sean Slade, Seung Lee, Dean Brooks, Doug McCall. We encourage readers to submit comments or suggested edits by posting a comment on the Mini-blog & Discussion Page for this section or posting a comment below: Text
This summary was first posted in June 2012. Currently it has been posted as an "excerpt/adaptation", "first draft" or "revised draft" and "first or revised edition" version. The following individuals or organizations have contributed to the development of this topic. We encourage readers to submit comments or suggested edits by posting a comment on the Mini-blog & Discussion Page for this section or posting a comment below: Due to the length of Handbook Sections (similar to a book chapter) prepared for this web site and knowledge exchange program, we post these documents as separate documents. Click on this web link to access the draft or completed version on this topic. Come back to this page to post any comments or suggestions. Bibliography/Toolbox on
Key research, reports and resources on this topic are highlighted below. Many of the topics in this web site also have extensive bibliographies/toolboxes (BTs) published as separate documents. Click on this web link to access the full version of our Bibliography/Toolbox on this topic. These lists use our outline for these collections that we have developed over several years of curating these materials.
The following additional resources are posted on this web site or published by other credible sources. Please send any suggested additions to i[email protected] |
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The number of summaries completed or drafted in this section are listed below) - Overview
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