Management practices and performance improvement in manufacturing enterprises: The case of kaizen adoption in Ghana

Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) together with Ghana’s National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) introduced Kaizen techniques through training to manufacturing enterprises in Ghana. This study sought to establish whether the intervention had any impact on the performance of enterprises which received the training. Our results show that Kaizen had significant impact on key performance indicators of the enterprises which adopted the techniques. We also observed significant differences in behavioral/process indicators between the treated firms and their counterparts that were not trained and had not adopted Kaizen. Hence, we argue that factoring Kaizen into Ghana’s recent policy to establish a factory in each administrative district may yield substantial benefits.