The role of employees' participation and managers' authority on continuous improvement and performance

Beyond efficiency: the role of lean practices and cultures in developing dynamic capabilities microfoundations

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to theorize and test the relationships among lean operations and lean supply chain practices, learning- and innovation-oriented lean cultures and dynamic capabilities (DCs) microfoundations. Further, this study aims to assess the association of DCs microfoundations with process innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

The researchers combine primary data collected from 153 manufacturing firms located in five continents using a survey designed for the purpose of this study with archival data downloaded from the Bureau Van Dijk Orbis database and test the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modelling.

Findings

Results support the contribution of lean operations and lean supply chain practices to the development of DCs microfoundations, which further lead to greater process innovation. Additionally, while a learning-oriented lean culture positively moderates the relationships between both lean operations and lean supply chain practices and DCs microfoundations, an innovation-oriented lean culture only moderates the relationship between lean operations practices and DCs microfoundations.

Practical implications

This study identifies DCs microfoundations as the key mechanisms for firms implementing lean practices to achieve greater levels of process innovation and the important role played by lean cultures. This study provides direction for managers to put in place DCs through lean implementations, enabling their firms to be ready to respond to challenges and opportunities generated by environmental changes.

Originality/value

While previous research has confirmed the positive effects of lean practices on efficiency, the role of lean practices and cultures in developing capabilities for reacting to environmental dynamism has received little attention. This study offers an empirically supported framework that highlights the potential of lean to adapt processes in response to environmental dynamics, thereby extending the lean paradigm beyond the traditional focus on operational efficiency.

Effect of lean implementation on team psychological safety and learning

Purpose

Frontline teams are at the centre of lean transformations, but the teams also transform as they implement lean. This study examines these changes and seeks to understand how lean relates to team psychological safety and learning.

Design/methodology/approach

This research setting is the Romanian division of a leading European energy company. The authors collected team-level audit and survey data, which the authors used to test the effect of lean implementation on team psychological safety and learning. The authors’ team-level data are complemented with qualitative interviews conducted with team members and headquarters leaders.

Findings

The results of the regression analyses show that leanness is positively associated with team psychological safety, which is in turn positively associated with learning. Thus, this research provides evidence that leanness – mediated by team psychological safety – increases team learning.

Practical implications

Lean changes team dynamics and learning positively by ensuring and promoting an emotionally sound work environment with clear team structures, an appropriate level of autonomy, and strong leadership.

Originality/value

This paper contributes evidence of important psychological mechanisms that characterise team-level lean implementation. Particularly, the authors highlight how team psychological safety mediates the relationship between leanness and team learning.

Establishing the interplay between lean operating and continuous improvement routines: a process view

Purpose

Building on the routine dynamics literature, this paper aims to expand our philosophical, practical and infrastructural understanding of implementing lean production. The authors provide a process view on the interplay between lean operating routines and continuous improvement (CI) routines and the roles of different actors in initiating and establishing these routines.

Design/methodology/approach

Using data from interviews, observations and document analysis, retrospective comparative analyses of three embedded case studies on lean implementations provide a process understanding of enacting and patterning lean operating and CI routines in manufacturing SMEs.

Findings

Incorporating the “who” and “how” next to the “what” of practices and routines helps explain that rather than being implemented in isolation or even in conjunction with each other, sustainable lean practices and routines come about through team leader and employee enactment of the CI practices and routines. Neglecting these patterns aligned with unsustainable implementations.

Research limitations/implications

The proposed process model provides a valuable way to integrate variance and process streams of literature to better understand lean production implementations.

Practical implications

The process model helps manufacturing managers, policy makers, consultants and educators to reconsider their approach to implementing lean production or teaching how to do so.

Originality/value

Nuancing the existing lean implementation literature, the proposed process model shows that CI routines do not stem from implementing lean operating routines. Rather, the model highlights the importance of active engagement of actors at multiple organizational levels and strong connections between and across levels to change routines and work practices for implementing lean production.

Acting Instead of Reacting—Ensuring Employee Retention during Successful Introduction of i4.0

The increasing implementation of digital technologies has various positive impacts on companies. However, many companies often rush into such an implementation of technological trends without sufficient preparation and pay insufficient attention to the human factors involved in digitization. This phenomenon can be exacerbated when these technologies become highly dependent, as during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to better understand challenges and to propose solutions for a successful implementation of digitized technology. A literature review is combined with survey results and specific consulting strategies. Data from the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany were collected by means of an online survey, with a representative sample of the German population. However, we did not reveal any correlation between home office and suffering, mental health, and physical health (indicators of digitization usage to cope with COVID-19 pandemic), but rather that younger workers are more prone to using digitized technology. Based on previous findings that older individuals tend to have negative attitudes toward digital transformation, appropriate countermeasures are needed to help them become more tech-savvy. Accordingly, a software tool is proposed. The tool can help the management team to manage digitization efficiently. Employee well-being can be increased as companies are made aware of necessary measures such as training for individuals and groups at an early stage.