Leadership and the Social Psychology of Lean Enterprise (original) (raw)

The Chronological studies of lean and leadership for improvement of organizational performance

Journal of Public Value and Administration Insights

The objective of this review is to identify the most effective characteristics of leaders to enable lean implementation, and helps the organization to improve or change their already implemented strategies to enhance performance through lean. The litreture aim to measure the leadership style for implementation of lean contributes towards building behaviors of leaders that supports the change process like lean. The methodology contains peer reviewed journal, which uncovered 67 reviewed articles from 2003-2017. The conclusion after review explore that senior management and human resources must support and operationalized such opportunity of development. The development is purposed to enable lean implementation. The proper implementation of leadership behaviors improved the success of lean system and validates to achieve high sustainability in performance.

Relationship between lean manufacturing implementation and leadership styles

Regardless the kind of organization, a successful lean manufacturing (LM) implementation is highly dependent on its people, both leaders and followers. Hence, the way leaders act and behave influence the attitudes and behaviors of the followers, setting the predominant culture within the organization undergoing a lean implementation. This article aims at identifying the leadership styles and contextual variables that best support companies undergoing a LM implementation. To achieve that we apply a clustering method that combines information gathered from a survey carried out with 68 leaders from different companies with different levels of lean implementation. Our approach identifies leadership styles that may contribute to the level of lean practices adoption considering specific contextual variables of the leadership such as age, experience and size of team. We argue that, viewed as an evolutionary process, there is more than one best way to lead teams that are implementing lean. Further, we state that leadership contextual variables are associated with leadership behaviors and the level of LM implementation, indicating that the expected relationship between leaders' styles and LM implementation may not be as suggested in the existing literature.

What are the values and behaviors of effective lean leaders

2010

In this exploratory study, we come to specify values and behaviors of six highly effective Lean middle managers, operating in three Dutch firms that have adopted Lean Production methods. With them we held interviews, surveys and video-analyzed regular staff meetings. For exemplary Lean leaders, key values are ‘honesty’ and ‘participation and teamwork.’ Their two most frequently found behaviors are: ‘actively listening’ and ‘building and sustaining trust relations;’ these were shown more often when more experienced in Lean. Our findings and resulting hypothetical model calls for longitudinal field designs to study Lean leadership and Lean team cultures.

Values and behaviors of effective lean managers: Mixed-methods exploratory research

European Management Journal, 2017

Lean Management is a managerial approach focused on enhancing customer value through the elimination of non-value adding steps from work processes. Lean Management is also enjoying a resurgence, largely because its 'do more with less' philosophy is particularly well-suited for the austere conditions of a 'Great Recession' recovery. Despite this resurgence with practitioners, however, academic research of Lean Management, in particular research on the leadership of lean initiatives, remains limited. In this study, we identify a constellation of lean values and behaviors of effective lean managers, based on extant research and the views of expert practitioners, and a field study of lean managers. In the first of two empirical studies, we produce an initial list of values and behaviors, derived from both the lean and leadership literature, and from three Delphi rounds with 19 expert lean practitioners. In study 2, we corroborate and refine the list with a sample of effective lean middle managers, through 18 interviews; a survey (N ¼ 43); and fine-grained video-analyses of their in situ behaviors during meetings with subordinates. The values identified include: honesty, candor, participation and teamwork, and continuous improvementdall indicative of self-transcendence and openness to change. Regarding behaviors, we find that the effective lean middle managers of our sample, compared to other middle managers, engage significantly more in positive relations-oriented "active listening" and "agreeing" behaviors, and significantly less in "task monitoring" and counterproductive work behaviors (such as "providing negative feedback" and "defending one's own position"). To conclude, we put forward five new propositions intended to guide future research and a more successful practice of 'lean leadership.'

A Way Forward to Attain Lean Manufacturing Status through Transformational Leadership

2016

Lean system is among the most extensively implemented business strategy, for quality and cost effectiveness. With roots in 1960’s Toyota Production System (TPS) and Just-In-Time (JIT), Lean focuses on customer satisfaction. The goal is to produce exactly what customer wants, when and in what amount. For achieving the goal, principles like waste elimination, empowered employees and continuous improvement are employed. Transformational leaders activate higher-order needs in followers. Research by Krishnan [13] suggests that superior performance is possible only through stimulating and motivating followers to higher levels of performance through transformational leadership. Superior performance is possible only by transforming followers’ values, attitudes, and motives from a lower to a higher plane of arousal and maturity. The intention throughout this research is how to gain the lean status through transformational leaders. Results of this research shows that transformational leaders ...

The Role of Leadership in Implementing Lean Manufacturing

Procedia CIRP, 2017

It is widely accepted that for the successful implementation of lean manufacturing, the senior management commitment is of great importance. However, the lean journey is usually a long one, and eventually management commitment creeps. Furthermore, the involvement of employees in daily improvements is also critical for the success of implementation. Lean leadership can be considered as a way of sustaining and improving the employee performance in lean production systems. In the present study, a thorough literature review is presented focusing in reviewing the principles of lean leadership and the practices that can lead in improving the employee performance. Furthermore, the characteristics and qualities of lean leader are discussed.

Leadership that Facilitate the Successful Implementation of Lean Six Sigma

2020

Researchers have identified leadership as a critical success factor for Lean Six Sigma implementation. It is essential to understand leadership behaviours that facilitate the use of Lean Six Sigma. This paper aims to identify leadership styles from the literature that can facilitate Lean Six Sigma implementation, which in turn broaden the current understanding of the suitable leadership styles. Also, the authors aim to explore how leadership styles can enhance Lean Six Sigma operations. The authors systematically reviewed the literature on leadership styles and Lean Six Sigma. The results determined the leadership styles that can enable the use of Lean Six Sigma successfully. These leadership styles are as follows: situational (task-oriented or relation-oriented behaviour), transformational, servant, authentic, empowering, and distributed leadership. The authors provide a better understanding for practitioners and researchers from existing literature on how leaders’ behaviours can e...

Customizing Lean Leadership: New Facilitator Case Studies

Proc. 28th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC), 2020

This paper presents the fourth issuance of Building a Lean Culture with a Lean Leadership (LL) training program initiated by the company. So far, the LL program has reached over five hundred participants. Over the last year, the program "grew" new passionate facilitators who then taught their Business Units and Departments. These new facilitators engaged with their students at a much deeper level by applying the concepts specifically to meet their needs. The connection was cultivated organically because both the teachers and students had a personal and professional relationship already in place from working together. This paper shares success stories from the new facilitators on how their teams, in the company's value stream, applied LL knowledge to their business. The concepts were applied in a variety of ways including go to the Gemba as a customer strategy for computer specialists, who typically work in the office. Transforming the company's business includes all leaders teaching LL as a key part of their skillsets to improve organizational health. The program's main goal is to disseminate lean through the company to support "the Leadership model" described by Howell (Howell et al. 2004) which is "coaching and continual fostering of an organizational environment conducive to building trust among people for collaboration, learning, and innovation".