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Dr Norman R. Hood, Director of the British Paper and Board Industry Research Association, will be speaking at Aslib on ‘Technical information services to a craft industry’, on Monday 22nd October at 5·30 for 6 p.m.

The purpose of this paper is to take a critical, analytical approach to explore the growth and spread of Lean through the academic and practitioner community over the last 25 years to understand the impact of the book The Machine that Changed the World on management thinking.

A comprehensive and systematic review of the extant literature of lean was undertaken and analysed critically to observe patterns and trends that could explain the acceptance of Lean as an operations management philosophy. The review spans from 1987 to 2013. To enable us to effectively manage and understand the diffusion of this literature a database, the Lean Publications Database, was constructed. The number of publications has been adjusted to compensate for growth in the total number of articles published in the same period.

Lean has evolved to be one of the best-known, yet fiercely debated, process improvement methodologies. It emerged during a proliferation of such methodologies in the business and management literature. Lean has developed from a generic description of Toyota Production System (TPS) to a particular type of organisational and management intervention focused on best practice and process improvement methodologies.

This paper provides the first comprehensive review of the Lean literature, from the perspective of Lean as the unit of analysis. It covers both sides of the academic debate and categorises the progression of Lean from its origins as a generic description of TPS to a movement that has changed management systems in many and diverse sectors.

This paper demonstrates how Lean research, application and thinking has evolved over 25 years from its origins in Japanese auto-manufacturing to a holistic value system that is applicable to all business sectors, both private and public.

In most empirical studies on Lean, the unit of analysis is the organisation. In this study, the unit of analysis is the Lean phenomenon itself. This paper examines the impact of The Machine that Changed the World on management thinking. In addition, it presents a step to developing an underpinning theory by linking Lean to the Theory of Swift, Even Flow. As such it is of interest to academics in the field of operations management and offers a contribution to knowledge. It is also likely to be of interest to policy makers. Considerable amounts of public money have been spent, and continue to be spent, on promoting Lean. Taxpayers and policymakers are likely to be interested in whether that expenditure is justifiable. 25 years of publications have been analysed to provide clarity around this popular approach to organisational improvement.

Numerous studies on Western samples exist on work–family conflict (WFC) and work–family enrichment (WFE). Generalizing such results to other cultures may lead to erroneous interpretations of results. The present study emphasizes the role of different types of support on both work–family conflict and enrichment among university faculty in India.

An online survey was administered to university faculty in India. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

Results based on a sample of 199 university faculty in India indicated that supervisor and coworker support did not significantly reduce work–family conflict but increased work–family enrichment. The type of family support (instrumental versus emotional) had an impact, particularly on work-family enrichment.

Research on work–family dynamics in India is still in its nascent stage. This study attempted to address this gap by studying both conflict and enrichment dynamics in the family and work lives of university faculty in India.

In response to increasing public health concerns about processed meat consumption, many innovations in meat technology focus on health-oriented product reformulations. Processed meat is not a homogeneous food category. The purpose of this paper is to explore consumer perception of the “healthier” reformulation of different processed meat products using two approaches: salt and fat reduction; and enrichment with healthy ingredients.

Seven focus group interviews were carried out with 40 Irish regular meat consumers (30 female, ten male) who were solely or jointly responsible for food shopping. Two rounds of card sorting procedures were employed to reveal perceptions on reformulation of 20 different processed meat products. Thematic analysis was used for analysing transcripts.

Health and flavour concerns and product popularity were the main factors influencing participants’ perceptions. Some participants were unsure or had misconceptions about the healthiness of certain meat products. Participants suggested reducing salt and fat content in processed meat products they perceived as the least healthy ones (theme 1) and improving the healthiness of products which were favoured by children (theme 2) and those meat products which people consumed regularly as a source of protein (theme 3). Participants were not in favour of any reformulation of speciality-type products (theme 4).

Consumer insights identified in this study can inform future approaches to making processed meats healthier.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate systematic application of grounded theory to understand antecedents, moderators and consequences of family-to-work enrichment in India. The paper throws light on the key tenets of grounded theory research and explains its use as a rigorous method for management research.

“Paradigm model” of grounded theory was used for data analysis. Data were collected through in-depth interviews of 24, middle managers in India. Interviewees were from various industries like IT, software, insurance, banking, telecom, media, consulting and fast moving consumer goods.

This study identifies family resources as an antecedent of family-to-work enrichment. Community resources and work-role salience facilitate positive relation between family resources and family-to-work enrichment. Further, psychological capital has been identified as a consequence. Strategies adopted by the professionals to enhance their family-to-work enrichment have also been explored.

This study provides a holistic understanding of family-to-work enrichment, an under researched phenomenon by exploring relation between work, family and community resources.

The integration of three domains, i.e. work, family and community provide insights to managers and policy makers about the importance of family and community in the organizations.

This study fulfills the need to explore positive side of work-family interface especially, in emerging economies like India. Moreover, it is the first attempt to study the work-family-community interface from a grounded theory approach in the Indian context and probably one of the first few in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the effect of lean manufacturing on productivity changes and to identify the root sources of productivity changes. Furthermore, the authors explore the moderating effects of research and development (R&D) to examine the relationship between lean manufacturing and productivity changes.

This paper employs the propensity score matching (PSM) model combined with the difference-in-difference (DID) estimation to overcome the selectivity bias. The Malmquist productivity index is used to capture productivity changes. By analyzing 671 Chinese manufacturing listed firms from 2009 to 2014, the moderating effects of R&D on the relationship between lean manufacturing and productivity changes are measured.

The results reveal that lean manufacturing implementation has non-significant effects on productivity changes in principle, while a detailed analysis indicates that lean manufacturing could improve scale efficiency significantly. While engaged in R&D could significantly improve the efficiency of technological changes for lean manufacturing implementation firms, there exist negative effects on pure technical efficiency.

This research only covers manufacturing listed firms in China. Further studies should extend the generalizability of the findings.

This study helps managers to identify the important role of R&D on the relationship between lean manufacturing and productivity changes and provides insights into how to improve the lean manufacturing performance.

This paper appears to be one of the earliest studies on the relationship between lean manufacturing and productivity changes by applying the PSM combined with DID estimation in Chinese manufacturing environment.

Science mapping is an essential application of visualization technology widely used in safety, construction management and environmental science. The purpose of this study was to explore thermal comfort in residential buildings (TCinRB) research in India, identify research trends using a science mapping approach and provide a perspective for recommending future research in TCinRB.

This study used the VOSviewer tool to conduct a systematic analysis of the development trend in TCinRB studies in India based on Scopus Index articles published between 2001 and 2020. The annual numbers of articles, geographical locations of studies, major research organizations and authors, and the sources of journals on TCinRB were presented based on the analysis. Then, using co-authorship analysis, the collaborations among the major research groups were reported. Furthermore, research trends on TCinRB studies were visually explored using keyword co-occurrence analysis. The emerging research topics in the TCinRB research community were discovered by analyzing the authors’ keywords.

The findings revealed that studies had been discovered to pay more attention to north-east India, vernacular architecture, Hyderabad apartments and temperature performance in the past two decades. Thermal adaptation, composite climate, evaporative cooling and clothing insulation are emerging research areas in the TCinRB domain. The findings summarized mainstream research areas based on Indian climatic zones, addressed current TCinRB research gaps and suggested future research directions.

This review is particularly significant because it could help researchers understand the body of knowledge in TCinRB and opens the way for future research to fill an important research gap.

This study aims to advance the understanding of digital marketing capability by conducting a comprehensive, systematic review of relevant literature at the firm level.

The study utilizes categorization and contextualization of qualitative methodologies to review the literature, using Scopus databases to collect 57 journals with 143 peer-reviewed papers as the main focus. The research gaps and DMCs were analyzed and synthesized and presented as collective categorization together with the proposed future direction framework.

This study proposed the relevance of digital marketing capabilities for businesses and the key measurement of business performance. The proposed dimensions of the digital marketing capabilities framework are to identify new research directions for both marketing and IT strands.

This study classify five main different themes in digital marketing incorporating with digital technologies (DTs) era and proposed relevance of digital marketing capabilities for businesses (B2C and B2B) and keys measurement of business performances.

The objectives of the study are to identify and understand the environment, relationships and barriers for the key stakeholders in changing their workplace environment, and to negotiate and create an action plan to address the effectiveness issues in relation to rolling out CANDO across the Trust.

This study has adopted a multi‐method approach using action learning/research, questionnaire, participant observation, and reflexive analysis.

The results indicate that there are individual, group and system improvements, but to achieve these the training in CANDO has to be action based as the “knowing‐by‐doing” (not just the theory) has to be experienced, learnt, shared and disseminated to other teams.

As this is a pilot study, the findings are at a preliminary stage and therefore limit the generalisibility of the results. However, there has been an opportunity to test methodological instruments that will enable us to understand the overall effectiveness of CANDO as a mechanism of change within the health setting. The implications of this research are discussed at three levels: individual, department and strategic.

Undertaking research in the health sector is a break from the Lean Enterprise Research Centre's roots in manufacturing, distribution and retail/service sectors. The importance of improving quality and performance are key to all sectors and we wish to contribute to understanding the transferability of good practice and organisational change. This is the first time CANDO implementation has been reported in a health setting as a means of change within the NHS.

This article attempts to understand the impact of global consumer culture and ethnocentric consumerism on global citizenship by identifying the mediating effect of cultural intelligence.

The proposed structural equation model explains the relationship between global consumer culture, ethnocentric consumerism, and global citizenship. The empirical analysis involves an online survey targeted young people in Indonesia context.

The empirical evidence broadly supports the view that cultural intelligence strengthens the impact of global consumer culture and ethnocentric consumerism on global citizenship. There is a strong tendency in this study to suggest that global consumerism will not be able to contribute to global citizenship unless cultural intelligence provides as a mediating variable. However, the results do not support the mainstream literature, which suggests that ethnocentric consumerism harms global citizenship.

This study extends the discussion on achieving sustainable development by examining global citizenship leads to a better understanding of consumer culture theory.