Abstract

The aim of this research is to present and explore gaps regarding factors affecting Kaizen implementation in in private and government owned organizations in Ethiopia. Qualitative with descriptive analytical synthetic approach was designed to study. Integrative review is used to summarize the previous empirical and theoretical literatures. This study used cross organizational analysis to address the topics among different contexts. By using various search methods 34 researches were found and 9 of them were discarded from the study because they were out of study contexts. This study delimited to 26 researches from which 9 researches were conducted in private owned, 13 researches targeted on government owned and the remaining 4 researches targeted private and government owned organizations. Seven themes were approached to the study and nowadays researchers who studied factors that affect kaizen implementation in Ethiopia focused on the issues of top management commitment, management support reward and recognitions, coordination, cooperation, motivation, effective leadership, communication, integration, team work, knowledge, skill education, training, culture , attitude towards kaizen, follow up, supervision and monitoring, preparation, planning, material resources and infrastructure. Practical knowledge gap, population gap, methodology gap and knowledge gaps were identified and future researchers are suggested to carry out researches by filling these gaps and focusing on an explored issue such as, working habit performance appraisal, organization structure (organic vs mechanistic), health and safety and organization life cycle through incorporating public sectors.