The relationship between organizational attitude and lean practices: an organizational sense-making perspective
Industrial Management & Data Systems
ISSN: 0263-5577
Article publication date: 22 July 2020
Issue publication date: 7 September 2020
Abstract
Purpose
Past studies of lean have failed to sufficiently address the importance of social factors for successful lean implementations. This paper aims to broaden and deepen the understanding of lean as a socio-technical paradigm by conceptualizing lean implementation as an organizational change process.
Design/methodology/approach
This study draws on the organizational sense-making literature to conceptualize and validate lean implementation as an organizational change process that necessitates a focus on the ability of organizational actors to construct a shared meaning of lean. This study posit that this shared understanding shapes the collective behaviour and attitudes of people towards a future desired organizational state such as a successful implementation of lean. Survey data were collected from various manufacturing and services firms to test the hypothesis derived from literature using a structural equation modelling approach.
Findings
The mutual social interactions of organizational actors contribute to an enabling lean organizational attitude that has a dominant effect on the lean practices of employee involvement, internal technical practices, supplier and customer management. This study also established boundary conditions for these relationships by identifying firm size as a moderating variable.
Research limitations/implications
The findings establish a supportive organizational attitude as an antecedent for lean implementation, which goes beyond the current socio-technical characterization of lean management. This conceptualization draws the attention of researchers and practitioners towards the critical role of the cooperative behaviours of organizational actors in lean implementations.
Originality/value
The statistical results add a novel perspective to the discourse on the social dimension of lean implementation by conceptualizing and validating lean management as a combination of organizational attitude and the process facilitators comprising of employee empowerment, internal technical practices, supplier and customer management.
Keywords
Citation
Malik, M. and Abdallah, S. (2020), "The relationship between organizational attitude and lean practices: an organizational sense-making perspective", Industrial Management & Data Systems, Vol. 120 No. 9, pp. 1715-1731. https://doi.org/10.1108/IMDS-09-2019-0460
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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