The role of employee empowerment in the implementation of continuous improvement

How digital leadership adds affective commitment of new generation employees: an affective events perspective

How do leaders' responses to the digital era affect new generation employees' affective commitment? As digital leaders have led to new ways of distributing digital resources and building virtual relationships, employees are facing a shift in the way of interaction, which influences their affective response to organizations. This study aims to understand how digital leaders interact with new generation employees to influence changes in employees' affective commitment to organizations. We have developed a chain mediating model and tested it on data collected from 408 new generation employees working in China. Ultimately, we found that digital leadership is associated with more positive changes in new generation employees' affective commitment. Furthermore, both employee empowerment and employee voice behavior mediate the relationship between digital leadership and affective commitment, forming a chain mediation mechanism in this relationship. We conclude with a discussion of theoretical implications and practical applications.

The role of management in lean implementation: evidence from the pharmaceutical industry

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to investigate how soft lean practices moderate the performance effects of hard lean practices. The authors provide new evidence from the pharmaceutical industry, which is characterized by a highly regulated and technical environment and has been largely uncharted in the lean literature.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a review of the literature, the authors define a set of soft and hard lean practices. The authors test the hypotheses using factor analysis and moderated hierarchical linear regression on a unique dataset containing survey data and real performance measures of 351 pharmaceutical plants.

Findings

The results show that soft lean practices can be both enabling and constraining. When management engages in performance measurement, visualisation and employee empowerment the relationship between hard lean practices and performance is positively moderated. On the other hand, when managers emphasise goal setting and work standardisation the performance outcomes are reduced.

Practical implications

Effective lean managers build organisational commitment by motivating other employees to implement lean. They use performance measurement, visualisation and employee empowerment to focus on the “why”. Less effective managers engage in commanding and micro-management. Such managers focus on the “what” by using practices like goal setting and work standardisation.

Originality/value

This article contributes to the literature on lean management by empirically testing the moderator-variable interaction effects between soft and hard lean practices. In addition, it adds new evidence from the important pharmaceutical industry.

Key activity indicators: critical review and proposal of implementation criteria

Purpose

This paper discusses the concept, definition and usage of Key Activity Indicators (KAIs) and their integration within a Performance Measurement and Management system (PMM).

Design/methodology/approach

The actual definition and application areas of the KAIs are determined through a systematic literature review. Successively, a thorough definition of Key Activity Indicators is provided, along with a set of criteria for their deployment. Lastly, a case involving a Large Scale Retail Trade (LSRT) company is reported to report an example for guiding KAIs adoption.

Findings

This research shows that the scientific background concerning KAIs is still not mature. Moreover, the paper defines the role of KAIs for measuring operational activities and their possible connection with Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

Research limitations/implications

Although KAIs have been introduced and discussed in the scientific literature; there is no evidence of criteria to deploy these indicators, leaving organizations without any guidance for their operational implementation.

Practical implications

From an academic standpoint, the study provides an overview of the usage of KAIs within the present scientific contributions, showing the advancements of this research field. From an industrial standpoint, the research proposes a set of criteria for the organizational deployment of KAIs.

Originality/value

The study investigates the concept of KAIs that, besides being originally conceived within World Class Manufacturing (WCM), has not received much attention in the scientific literature.

Scenario-based solutions for implementing an internet of things system at the organizational level in small- and medium-sized enterprises

BACKGROUND:

Despite the great potential that technical solutions, based on the Internet of Things (IoT), offer for companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), companies are hesitant to implement such solutions. Reasons for this lie in the resulting far-reaching change, which particularly affects working activities and communication between employees and IoT objects in their environment.

OBJECTIVE:

Our objective is to investigate (1) how the implementation of an IoT solution, consisting of multiple objects, might be integrated into daily working activities; (2) what reactions might occur at the individual level; and (3) what structural conditions should be established at the organizational level.

METHODS:

We applied a scenario-based design. Specifically, we conducted interviews to develop personas and scenarios describing human–machine interactions during implementation of the IoT solution in an initial phase.

RESULTS:

Regarding changing work activities, we identified three structural conditions that facilitate the implementation of IoT in SMEs: (1) the development of a support unit that bundles communication and training activities as well as internal and external knowledge; (2) the planning of an appropriate testing and adoption phase that enables participation and feedback; and (3) the creation of an incentive structure that includes social reward, empowerment, and recognition.

CONCLUSION:

IoT gives employees enhanced access to resources, information, and feedback, supporting an efficient way of working. To successfully implement IoT solutions, companies, especially SMEs, must actively address organizational change and empower their employees to manage technological innovations at an early stage.

Exploring the process of management system implementation: a case of Six Sigma

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to discover the learning mechanisms and temporal dynamics of implementing systems (Six Sigma) as it unfolds over time.

Design/methodology/approach

The data come from a European engineering company that was implementing a Six Sigma-based quality management system (QMS) over a seven-year period. The analysis is based on an event-sequence reconstruction of the implementation process as it unfolded over time and discovers four different learning mechanisms that emerged: programmatic, persistent, adaptive and dialectical learning mechanisms. The research follows a process design study, where the authors study how the process unfolds over time.

Findings

Much of the literature on implementing management systems suggests that implementation follows a prescribed sequence of “turn-key” steps. However, the findings show that only 40% of all events were driven by prescribed “turn-key” generic practices, while 56% of events required constructing new practices via adaptive and dialectical learning. Moreover, the implementation process did not proceed in a linear programmatic fashion, but instead followed a punctuated equilibrium pattern, which alternated between periods of incremental change and major organizational change. The study also found that implementation required changing many complementary organizational structures and practices that were interdependent with the management system (i.e. Six Sigma). By understanding the implementation process, managers can better assess the time and effort involved, better adapt the system to their situated context and predict critical junctures where implementation could break down.

Originality/value

This research complements the few studies that have examined the process of implementing management systems. Most studies examine factors or conditions that result in implementation success (the what of implementing systems), but few examine the process of implementation and the learning that takes place during implementation (the how of implementing systems), which is a complex nonlinear process that involves different modes of learning.

Antecedents of kaizen culture and its effect on operational performance: perspective of manufacturing companies in Malaysia

Purpose

The purpose of this research is to examine the effect of kaizen culture on innovation and operational performance of electrical and electronic manufacturing companies in Malaysia. A research framework, with underpinning theories of dynamic capabilities and socio-technical systems, was conceptualized to investigate the interplay of these relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from 123 manufacturing companies using an online survey and analyzed with IBM SPSS Statistics version 24.0 and the partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) (SmartPLS) version 3.2.8.

Findings

Ultimately, the findings proved that kaizen culture is crucial for organizations to optimize their operational performance and can be nurtured through the implementation of process innovation and organizational innovation.

Originality/value

Unlike past studies, this research examines the concepts of innovation, kaizen culture and operational performance in a single study; thus, provides further opportunities for new discoveries through such relationships. Also, the novelty is identifying that kaizen culture can be nurtured via innovation.

Is lean a theory? Viewpoints and outlook

Purpose

Lean remains popular in a wide range of private and public sectors and continues to attract a significant amount of research. However, most of this research is not grounded in theory. This paper presents and discusses different expert viewpoints on the role of theory in lean research and practice and provides guidelines for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

Seven experienced lean authors independently provide their views to the question “is Lean a theory?” before Rachna Shah summarizes the viewpoints and provides a holistic outlook for lean research.

Findings

Authors agree, disagree and sometimes agree to disagree. However, a close look reveals agreement on several key points. The paper concludes that Lean is not a theory but has plenty of theoretical underpinnings. Many lean-related theories provide promising opportunities for future research.

Originality/value

As researchers, we are asked to justify our research drawing on “theory,” but what does that mean for a practice-driven phenomenon such as lean? This paper provides answers and directions for future research.

Digitalisation and the performance measurement and management system: reinforcing empowerment

Purpose

This study explores how information and communication technologies (ICT) can contribute to empowerment in an Industry 4.0 setting.

Design/methodology/approach

The results are based on a case study of a Norwegian manufacturing organisation that has highly automated production and an integrated ICT platform. Data analysis was guided by the Smith and Bititci (2017) framework for performance measurement and management.

Findings

When powered by advanced ICT, the performance measurement system matures. The design and development of the ICT platform also reinforce the organisation's existing performance management practices. Empowerment is strengthened when automated collection, analysis and reporting of performance data free up middle managers' time so that they, together with operators, can drive continuous improvement.

Research limitations/implications

The findings are limited to a single case study and require further testing for transferability to other organisations. Future research should explore whether performance management practices are also reinforced by ICT in more command- and control-oriented organisations.

Practical implications

The paper suggests an alternative strategy of Industry 4.0 transformation for organisations committed to empowerment. Such organisations should rely on in-house, iterative ICT development and build digital competence broadly.

Originality/value

This article contributes to the understanding of how performance measurement and management are interrelated and evolve in the context of Industry 4.0. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, highlighting the role of middle managers in empowering operators through continuous improvement is novel in the performance measurement and management literature.

Improving high lean team performance through aligned behaviour-value patterns and coactive vicarious learning-by-doing

Purpose

Why are some lean workfloor teams able to improve their already high performance, over time, and others not? By studying teams' and leaders' behaviour-value patterns, this abductive field study uncovers a dynamic capability at the team level.

Design/methodology/approach

Various methods were employed over three consecutive years to thoroughly examine five initially high-performing lean workfloor teams, including their leaders. These methods encompassed micro-behavioural coding of 59 h of film footage, surveys, individual and group interviews, participant observation and archival data, involving objective and perceptual team-performance indicators. Two of the five teams continued to improve and perform highly.

Findings

Continuously improving high lean team performance is found to be associated with (1) team behaviours such as frequent performance monitoring, information sharing, peer support and process improvement; (2) team leaders who balance, over time, task- and relations-oriented behaviours; (3) higher-level leaders who keep offering the team face-to-face support, strategic clarity and tangible resources; (4) these three actors' endorsement of self-transcendence and openness-to-change work values and alignment, over time, with their behaviours; and (5) coactive vicarious learning-by-doing as a “stable collective activity pattern” among team, team leader, and higher-level leadership.

Originality/value

Since lean has been undertheorised, the authors invoked insights from organisational behaviour and management theories, in combination with various fine- and coarse-grained data, over time. The authors uncovered actors' behaviour-value patterns and a collective learning-by-doing pattern that may explain continuous lean team performance improvement. Four theory-enriching propositions were developed and visualised in a refined model which may already benefit lean practitioners.

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

Purpose

Drawing on the theoretical concept of organisational fit, this paper questions the relevance of employees' participation in the link between continuous improvement (CI) and operational performance. The literature has long emphasised that to be successful, CI implementation needs to rely on employees' involvement as soon as its inception. This paper argues that this approach is not generalisable.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a database of 330 firms across 15 countries, regression analyses were used to hypothesise that the fit between CI and employee participation is positively associated with operational performance, and that the fit between CI and centralisation of authority is negatively associated with operational performance. The authors also ran a robustness check with polynomial regression analyses and the response surface methodology.

Findings

CI–employee participation fit is positively associated with operational performance, suggesting that there is less need for employees to be involved when a firm has scarcely developed CI. Employee participation becomes gradually more relevant as CI progresses. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the CI–centralisation of authority fit is negatively associated with operational performance, suggesting that a top-down management approach with centralised authority is preferable when CI is low, whereas a bottom-up management approach is helpful when a firm has extensively developed CI.

Originality/value

This research draws on the concept of organisational fit to explore the relationships between internal practices in the operations management literature. The authors suggest that managers should dynamically balance the practices of employee participation and centralisation of authority as CI improves. This study highlights that CI has different evolutionary levels that require different managerial approaches and practices.

Exploring the dark side of Lean: a systematic review of the lean factors that influence social outcomes

Purpose

Lean has shifted over the years from a set of tools to implement to a human-centric approach concerning both hard and soft factors. However, there is a limited research on these soft factors and how they influence companies performance and social outcomes on the one hand and how they enable the hard factors on the other hand. Taking this as a valuable opportunity, the purpose of this paper is to present the key motivating factors and key gaps in the literature as an agenda for future research.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic methodology to identifying the literature on social outcomes and factors in Lean is presented. Web of Science, EBSCO, Emerald, Science Direct, Google Scholar and the top journals were searched, and 158 papers were identified.

Findings

The systematic review helped the authors to identify the evolution, current trends, research gaps and an agenda for future research for exploring social outcomes in Lean and the factors mediating them. These factors are grouped and presented.

Practical implications

The implications of this work include understanding for managers and professionals how both soft and hard factors in Lean are related and that for a sustainable implementation, the whole system must be observed. This work could serve as a valuable resource that depending on the execution of Lean, either positive outcomes will emerge or even negative outcomes, referred to as “The Dark Side”.

Originality/value

This paper presents an extended survey on the factors in Lean mediating both companies’ performance and social outcomes. The authors also believe that this is possibly the most comprehensive systematic literature review on the topic and will set the foundation for various research avenues based on the key findings of this study.

IT’S MINE, I DECIDE WHAT TO CHANGE: THE ROLE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL OWNERSHIP IN EMPLOYEES’ PROCESS INNOVATION BEHAVIOUR

Employees play a major role in enabling organizations to innovate their processes. While conditions for participation have to be established, barriers have to be lowered and trainings take place, the motives of employees to participate in incremental and discontinuous process innovation are not well understood. One important soft factor not addressed yet sufficiently is psychological ownership of non-managerial employees that can contribute to increase process innovation activities. We apply a multi-time survey design gathering quantitative data which is analysed with structured equation modelling. The findings suggest that psychological ownership is important in fostering innovation behaviour with incremental innovation behaviour being an important mediator for the effect on radical innovation behaviour. We show how psychological ownership is useful in fostering process innovation behaviour with data from the financial services sector. Organisations should invest in establishing psychological ownership on the level of operations to increase process innovation.

Do recovery processes need empowered frontline employees?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether frontline employee empowerment (FEE) is necessary in the presence of streamlined recovery processes when customers attribute responsibility for the recovery process to the service provider.

Design/methodology/approach

The hypotheses were tested through a survey conducted with 253 bank customers, combined with two laboratory experiments run with 354 undergraduate students to assess service recovery efforts by an online store and a clinical laboratory.

Findings

Customers who attribute more responsibility for the recovery process to service providers only become more satisfied with FEE when recovery processes are not streamlined. The presence of streamlined processes and FEE is not sufficient to raise post-recovery satisfaction levels in individuals who attribute little responsibility for the process to service providers.

Originality/value

The study extends the literature on contingencies that influence the design of recovery strategies by showing when FEE matters. It also highlights the risks of designing service recovery practices, such as FEE or streamlined recovery processes, without considering that different customers do not evaluate such efforts in the same fashion. Research on service recovery design needs to fully integrate concepts from marketing, operations and human resources when the goal is to evaluate the effectiveness of such practices. The outcomes also offer managers insights for designing recovery strategies.

Spanish Validation of the Leader Empowering Behavior Questionnaire (LEBQ)

The concept of empowering leadership (EL) has attracted widespread academic and practical interest and different questionnaires have been developed to measure it. However, there are no instruments to measure EL in the Spanish language. This article presents the translation, adaptation, and validation of a scale to measure this construct. In addition, it analyzes the relationship between managers' EL and employees' job satisfaction. In turn, the study analyzes whether employees who participate in a greater number of continuous improvement (CI) programs have supervisors who favor more empowering behaviors. A total of 739 participants with various occupations from different companies that have implemented CI processes filled out the Spanish version of the Leader Empowering Behavior Questionnaire (LEBQ-sp). Two different subsamples were used to test the relationships between the LEBQ and job satisfaction and CI, by means of Pearson's correlation coefficient and analysis of variance, making it possible to provide evidence about the validity of the Spanish LEBQ. The confirmatory factor analysis supported the original structure of the six-factor model. The factors show a high level of internal consistency, as well as sufficient convergent and discriminant validity. Moreover, the results show that the more companies invest in formal CI programs, the more important it is for their leaders to adapt their behavior by displaying more EL. The LEBQ-sp is a valid and reliable instrument for use in research and a useful tool for applied purposes in the context of Spanish-speaking countries.

Good problem solvers? Leveraging knowledge sharing mechanisms and management support

Purpose

Organizational learning relies on problem-solving as a way to generate new knowledge. Good problem solvers should adopt a problem-solving orientation (PSO) that analyzes the causes of problems to arrive at an effective solution. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this relevant, though underexplored, topic by examining two important antecedents of PSO: knowledge sharing mechanisms and transformational leaders’ support.

Design/methodology/approach

Hierarchical linear modeling analyses were performed on a sample of 131 workers in 12 plants. A questionnaire was designed to collect data from shop-floor employees. Knowledge sharing was measured using the mechanisms of participative practices and standardized practices. Management support was assessed based on the extent to which supervisors engaged in transformational leadership.

Findings

Knowledge sharing mechanisms are an antecedent of PSO behavior, but management support measured in terms of transformational leadership is not. However, transformational leadership affects the use of knowledge sharing mechanisms that, in turn, is positively related to PSO behavior.

Practical implications

The research provides practical guidance for practitioners to understand how to manage knowledge in the workplace to promote employees’ PSO behaviors.

Originality/value

Though problem-solving activities are intrinsic in any working context, PSO is still very much underrepresented and scarcely understood in knowledge management studies. This study fills this gap by investigating the antecedents of PSO behavior.

A theoretical framework for the social pillar of lean

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework for the social pillar of lean (SPL), which is a neglected topic in the lean management literature.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors first identify shortcomings in research on the SPL that are attributable to neglect of relevant perspectives in organisational research. The authors then present a theoretical case outlining the factors that should be considered in SPL research, how they relate to one another and how they should be integrated in future studies of lean change implementation.

Findings

The theoretical framework for the SPL proposes a categorisation of factors and their relationships across levels of analysis that are relevant to the SPL. The inclusion of previously neglected perspectives, such as the relational coordination theory, within this framework offers new insights and directions for research.

Practical implications

By emphasising relationships, the SPL framework sheds light on the scale and complexity of the management challenges involved in lean implementation.

Originality/value

The proposed framework promises to enhance the efficacy of lean research by focussing on factors, such as relationships, that are most relevant to lean implementation.

“Power to the workers”

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to reveal how information and communication technology (ICT) can empower shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing environments.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors gather data from a mobile maintenance department of a steel manufacturing company and apply the method of a scenario-based design. The authors use data from interviews, observations and company documents to create problem and activity scenarios. The authors also demonstrate the development of a worker-centric digital design in multiple demonstration and evaluation cycles.

Findings

The authors find that ICT can be used to ensure that empowerment is not only a concept, but can sustainably empower daily operations.

Research limitations/implications

The authors contribute to theory by showing how structural empowerment can be used as a guiding theoretical lens to design ICT for shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing work environments. These implications are limited to findings from a single case study.

Practical implications

The results provide an overview of different empowerment dimensions, namely, the access to information, resources, support and opportunities, that can support employees in collaborative manufacturing environments.

Originality/value

This paper is first in suggesting a framework of how ICT designs can be used to empower shop floor workers in collaborative manufacturing environments.