Kaizen as an audience
Japanese society maintains an established set of well-defined boundaries that guide an
individual’s public behaviour, but these boundaries tend not to define the individual’s
behaviour in private. In public, the individual must uphold the tenets of Japanese society.
In private, individuals are free to nurture their creativity in ways that may not be possible
otherwise. However, an audience for this private creativity, or even an attentive ear, will at
times be missing. It is through this absence of audience that the (industrial) organisation
plays an important role by channelling hitherto private creativity and subsequent
expressions of individuality into a more public arena. The audience provided is the kaizen
environment. It is here that an individual’s expressions of creativity are manifest, becoming
the tools and methods of improvement, efficiency and product design. Therefore, the inputs
of kaizen are the very cultural and social boundaries of Japan coupled with the individual’s
need for creativity, and the outputs are the tangible tools and methods of improvement
activity observed in the workplace.