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Competency profiles for lean professionals – an international perspective

Ingo Kregel (Department of Applied Business and Technology Management, South Westfalia University of Applied Sciences, Hagen, Germany)
Nadine Ogonek (European Research Center for Information Systems, Münster, Germany)
Benjamin Matthies (Department of Applied Business and Technology Management, South Westfalia University of Applied Sciences, Hagen, Germany)

International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management

ISSN: 1741-0401

Article publication date: 7 January 2019

Issue publication date: 8 February 2019

827

Abstract

Purpose

Requirements for business improvement professionals depend on different job characteristics. By focussing on lean management, the purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to provide a comprehensive conceptualisation of competencies relevant for lean professionals by comparing them to an existing project management competency framework; and second, to identify their similarities and differences in three different analysed countries.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper investigates 2,701 online published job advertisements in the USA, UK and Germany by means of a content analysis to compare and contrast the respective job profiles.

Findings

Main findings are similarities and differences in the specification and perception of lean professional’s roles among the three countries. Strikingly, four out of eight considered competency categories comprise 74 per cent of the profiles’ most relevant keywords. Additionally, with the help of a latent semantic analysis, 16 specific competencies can be summarised in a lean professional’s competency taxonomy.

Research limitations/implications

The collected data only represent a snapshot of lean professionals’ advertisements. Also, text mining results from job profiles could largely differ from other techniques like recruiter interviews or company surveys. Further research could use different methods or combine them to construct a more complete model.

Practical implications

Lean education and training as well as the respective candidate selection processes can benefit from these studies’ results.

Originality/value

Requirements and job contents for lean professionals have not been empirically researched on a comparable in-depth level before, even though their expertise is in high demand in any kind of business sector.

Keywords

Citation

Kregel, I., Ogonek, N. and Matthies, B. (2019), "Competency profiles for lean professionals – an international perspective", International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, Vol. 68 No. 2, pp. 423-446. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJPPM-09-2017-0237

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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