دانلود رایگان مقاله ارزش و رفتار موثر مدیران ضعیف مخلوط روش تحقیق اکتشافی

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 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.

5. Discussion and propositions

This paper reports empirical research that aimed to identify the constellation of values and behaviors of effective lean middle managers as leaders of Lean Management initiatives. Spearheading a larger constellation of 25, the following five values were ranked highest by the effective lean middle managers and their associates: “honesty,” “participation and teamwork,” “responsibility,” “candor,” and “continuous improvement.” These five align closely with two of the four values clusters of Schwartz et al. (2012) and Brown and Trevino (2009) ~ . In addition, before this study, only two of these five (“participation and teamwork” and “continuous improvement”) had been identified by either the extant literature or in the accounts of the expert lean practitioners consulted for study 1. While “honesty” seems to fit well within lean's focus on fact-based management and transparency, it is seldom noted explicitly in the lean literature (e.g., Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1990). From our perspective, this absence can be explained by the fact that lean scholars, with their focus on tool-based approaches, have yet to substantively incorporate the general work values literature into their theoretical models. Clearly, merging Operations Management with other ‘pockets’ of the more ‘softer’ leadership and change management literature is likely to further enhance both research knowledge and practitioner competency in the successful adoption of Lean Management (Bortolotti, Boscari, & Danese, 2015; Samuel et al., 2015; Van Dun & Wilderom, 2012). Another contribution of the study was the related value of “candor” as typical of effective lean managers; i.e., being open about your own work views and feelings. Thus, in contrast to a negative ‘lean and mean’ mindset (Mehri, 2006; Radnor & Boaden, 2004), effective lean managers encourage employees to participate in the generation and implementation of ideas by endorsing honesty, candor, and teamwork and thus building intra-team psychological safety.