The Relationship of Continuous Improvement Practice with Service Operations Competitiveness in Healthcare

Although it is reasonable to admit that higher maturity in the continuous improvement practice may generate greater contributions to service operations competitiveness, there is little or hardly any discussion aiming to understand this relationship. Therefore, this paper proposes, in an explanatory form, a reflection on this research field by investigating the relationship between the continuous improvement maturity level and the stages of the service operations competitiveness, relating the abilities of each continuous improvement maturity level to the aspects inherent to each service operations competitiveness stage. The findings of this study are innovative in the research field as this research offers the proposal of a theoretical model that seeks to identify the relationship between the service operations competitiveness and its continuous improvement maturity level.