Abstract
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 = 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 improvement—all 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.’
1. Introduction
Precipitated by events in the financial sector in 2007, and fueled by the bursting of the U.S. and European housing markets, the global economy fell quickly into the ‘Great Recession,’ considered by the IMF (2009) as the worst global economic decline since World War II. Today, while the worst of the crisis may have passed, certain effects linger, particularly in regard to organizations' significantly reduced access to capital and credit (Bolger, 2015). Not surprisingly, Lean Management and other non-capital intensive approaches to improving efficiency, eliminating waste and enhancing customer value, are enjoying a resurgence (Bhamu & Sangwan, 2014; Samuel, Found, & Williams, 2015). To illustrate, executive search firm Avery Point Group reported that the number of lean job postings in 2013 had more than doubled since the beginnings of the post-crisis recovery.
5.2. Implications for lean practitioners
Turning finally to implications for practitioners, Lean Management, with its focus on efficiency and the elimination of waste, has proven to be a particularly effective approach for managers charged with leading their organizations to post-crisis recovery. To a large extent, this is not ‘news,’ having been well-documented in much of the lean research to date, which has focused heavily on lean tools and their applicability in resource-constrained conditions. In the course of conducting this particular study, however, we have identified an additional way whereby Lean Management might be especially timely and useful. And that is that the self-transcendence values and behaviors of lean, are well-suited for countering the selfenhancement values and behaviors that brought on the crisis in the first place (Board, 2010).
