Investigating the role of organizational culture in facilitating continuous improvement within Saudi non-profit organizations

It has been confirmed that organizational culture has a significant impact on facilitating continuous improvement, although it is not clear yet how this impact can be achieved. On the other hand, nonprofit organizations struggle mainly in sustaining resources and increasing the quality of the services they provide. Several recent studies have confirmed the crucial role of organizational culture in implementing operational management approaches. However, answering the question of “how” is still awaiting a clear road map. Nonetheless, nonprofit organizations contribute remarkably to economies and civilisation. They deserve research attention, and studies done on continuous improvement suggest it to be holistically beneficial. Hence, this paper shows an empirical investigation that selected Saudi nonprofit organizations for their social setting to explore the influence of organizational culture on facilitating continuous improvement. The approach of grounded theory has been employed, using qualitative data, to construct a reality based on participant perspectives. The thirty-one interviews that were conducted at thirteen organizations revealed many lower level cultural aspects. These aspects were evolved, during five focus groups, into six higher-level themes. The findings can be used by leaders to create desired change.