INTRODUCTION

The need to maintain competitiveness of a company, region, city or a country is becoming a prerequisite from the management sciences perspective. Nevertheless, in order to achieve the required level of competitiveness it is necessary to reach for various management tool. M. Imai [1986] in his paper under the highly expressive title of Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success indicates the groundbreaking significance of applying kaizen from the point of view of Japanese economy. In this philosophy M. Imai seeks the key success factor both for individual Japanese companies and the Japanese economy as a whole. From the date of publication of the famous above mentioned work we have been dealing with a certain kind of phenomenon of a difficult to quantify kaizen diffusion. The diffusion is manifested among others in:

1. – immense popularisation of applying kaizen principles in numerous countries and organizations,

2. – continuous enhancement of kaizen methodology,

3. – dynamic rise in the number and diversity of kaizen applications,

4. – stimulating with the use of kaizen creation and development of other management concepts, methods and tools,

5. – growth and professionalization of consulting and training services in the kaizen area.

The above outlined global kaizen tendencies, occurring in practice in operations of organizations of various sectors, do not remain neutral against management sciences both in cognitive and pragmatic dimension.