Teamworking and Lean revisited: a reply to Carter et al

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.

Structure Please; Continuous Improvement and Employee Consequences in a Dynamic Task Environment

Whilst continuous improvement (CI) programs have had an enduring appeal for several decades, their sustainability has been a concern for almost as long. Sustaining a CI program requires permanent support of all its stakeholders, particularly of the most important ones—employees. Some authors argue that continuous improvement programs are beneficial for employee wellbeing, while others contest this. We contribute to the small empirical basis for such claims by presenting results from research among care workers in Flemish nursing homes. Questionnaires from 553 care workers in a nursing home applying continuous improvement and in a reference group of nine comparable homes were analyzed to study differences in job demands, job resources, burnout risk, and work engagement. In addition, we have drawn on interviews, site visits, and other qualitative data to assess the extent to which the differences found may be attributed to the CI program used. Overall, the care workers in the nursing home with the CI program evaluated their jobs as better than their colleagues in the reference group. These differences are at least partly caused by the continuous improvement program. We argue that the main effect is that over time, daily work processes become more structured. The work pressure decreases as work becomes less hectic.

Lean and Six Sigma practices in the public sector: a review

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of publications relating to the use of continuous improvement (CI) methodologies, such as Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma over a 17-year period, to identify the themes and gaps, while informing the development of a future research agenda.

Design/methodology/approach

The systematic literature review identified 121 papers published between 2000 and 2017 from searches of over 1,400 peer-reviewed academic journals and also identified the application of Lean, Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma across the public sector.

Findings

This research compares the scale and breadth of the public sector with the application of CI methodologies and finds that such application is unstructured and, in some areas, sporadic. The research identifies common themes and research gaps including areas such as lack of shared understanding of Lean, gaps in strategy development and leadership and an overfocus on tools alone.

Research limitations/implications

The methodology is focussed on the journals rated in the ABS Journal Guide 2015, which allowed manual searches for accuracy and relevance to the area of investigation. It is recognised that this may exclude some articles which have been published in other journals but allowed for a structured and detailed investigation. The research identifies some very clear gaps which can inform future research agendas.

Practical implications

The paper details the implications and challenges to the public sector, generally, and to executive leadership, specifically, and, in particular, covers the common issues and concerns, which in turn will assist public sector organisations in implementing, reviewing or refreshing their CI initiatives.

Originality/value

No similar work has been conducted and while some individual areas such as health and education have been the subject of more focus, this research explores the public sector as a whole and considers the patterns of research in that context.

Can lean contribute to work intensification in healthcare?

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss the effects of the introduction of lean into healthcare workplaces, phenomena that have not been widely investigated.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper draws on discussions and findings from the literature. It seeks to bring the few geographically dispersed experiences and case studies together to draw some conclusions regarding lean’s negative effects.

Findings

Two recurring themes emerge. The first is there is little evidence of Lean’s impact on work and the people who perform it. The literature therefore suggests that we understand very little about how work conditions are changed and how Lean’s negative effects arise and may be managed in healthcare workplaces. A second observation is that Lean’s effects are ambiguous. For some Lean seems to intensify work, while for others it leads to improved job satisfaction and productivity. Given this variety, the paper suggests a research emphasis on Lean’s socio-cultural side and to derive more data on how work and its processes change, particularly in the context of healthcare team-working.

Originality/value

The paper concludes that without improved understanding of social contexts of Lean interventions its value for healthcare improvement may be limited. Future research should also include a focus on how the work is changed and whether high-performance work system practices may be used to offset Lean’s negative effects.