Despite the abundance of literature on Six Sigma, we know only a little about how project leaders’ behaviours create and manage effective Six Sigma teams. To address this gap, the present study investigates the influence of leaders’ coaching behaviours on operational absorptive capacity in Six Sigma teams. Hypotheses linking leaders’ coaching behaviours and the two components of operational absorptive capacity, potential and realised operational absorptive capacity, were tested using data from 324 members of 102 improvement teams from two European engineering manufacturing companies deploying Six Sigma. The study establishes that leader coaching has a positive impact on both potential and realised operational absorptive capacity. By considering absorptive capacity, a construct from the strategy literature in the context of operations improvement teams, this study demonstrates the usefulness of absorptive capacity in a new context and at a new level.

尽管关于六西格码的文献很多，但我们对项目负责人的行为如何创建和管理有效的六西格码团队知之甚少。为了解决这一差距，本研究调查了领导者的教练行为对六西格码团队运营吸收能力的影响。使用来自两个部署 6 Sigma 的欧洲工程制造公司的 102 个改进团队的 324 名成员的数据测试了将领导者的教练行为与运营吸收能力、潜在和实现的运营吸收能力这两个组成部分联系起来的假设。该研究表明，领导者教练对潜在的和已实现的运营吸收能力都有积极的影响。通过考虑吸收能力，