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Recognizing that very less number of research has been conducted on workforce agility, the current research aimed to examine the impact of organizational practices in the form of organizational learning and training, compensation, involvement, team work and information system (IS) on workforce agility. Influenced by the “Black Box” approach, the study also examined the role of psychological empowerment as a mechanism mediating the relationship between organizational practices and workforce agility.

The study has been conducted in selective Indian industries, representing manufacturing and service sector across public and private sectors. Quantitative and qualitative data have been collected from both executives and non-executives through reliable instruments validated in Indian context. Data have been analyzed using descriptive analysis, canonical correlation analysis and multiple regression.

Findings that organizational practices significantly related to workforce agility prove that organizational practices are capable of improving the agile attributes and behavior of the workforce. In detail, team work has the greatest influence on workforce agility, followed by Reward system, employee involvement, organizational learning and training and ISs. Further, the study result also proved the mediating role of psychological empowerment between organizational practices and workforce agility.

Organizations are to design practices related to organizational learning and training, compensation, involvement, team work and IS and implement them efficiently and effectively to enable agility within the workforce, as an agile workforce can only respond proactively to a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous business environment. Further, the result also suggests that managers should design the organizational practices capable of enhancing psychological empowerment, as the combination can deliver better workforce agility.

The research is useful considering very less number of research on workforce agility.

Poses the question as to why people often demonstrate so much less enthusiasm and commitment in work than outside it. Identifies empowerment as the means to restore a feeling of involvement at work. Defines empowerment and identifies a number of the barriers which can make the process difficult. Outlines the benefits to an organization which can result from empowerment.

Describes the implementation, over a two‐year period, of total quality management (TQM) in a design and manufacturing organization managed by traditional methods. Demonstrates the importance of ensuring that the statements made and signals given by a quality improvement team must be correctly understood by the workforce. Warns against allowing pressing business needs to divert the organization away from its quality improvement priority. Stresses that TQM will work only if top management demonstrates its commitment by actions and not just by words.

While downsizing has become an increasingly popular organizational tool in the achievement and/or maintenance of competitiveness and increased productivity, the negative side effect known as survivor syndrome continues to plague many post‐downsizing organizations. This two‐part article examines the full spectrum of research, with the goal of producing a model. The model is based upon the problems survivors experienced and modeled after the John Wanous realistic job preview (RJP). The realistic downsizing preview (RDP), which can be effectively used before the downsizing, is implemented to prevent survivor syndrome in the aftermath of the downsizing. The foundation of the RDP model is that by addressing issues that have been observed as survivor syndromes prior to a downsizing, the negative outcomes can be minimized. Part I considers downsizing, its effects on survivors and their needs, and the importance of good communication and perceived fairness within the process.

Although leanness is certainly not a new concept it is doubtless still relevant. Interestingly, newly developed manufacturing paradigms and systems are always examined in relation to leanness. In other words, leanness serves in most cases as the landmark paradigm with which comparisons are being drawn between the latter and recently pioneered approaches. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the evolutional orbit that leanness has followed over the years and serve as a herald of the current state of this evolution, which will be discussed further, in a separate paper.

A great part of this paper is devoted to highlighting the misconceptions surrounding issues such as what leanness really constitutes and what are the key concepts and practices that leanness encompasses. Two successful lean transition stories are presented showing how these lean tools and techniques were implemented in the cases of two UK‐based manufacturing companies.

Because of its inherently dynamic nature, leanness has undergone and still is undergoing a process of continuous and never‐ending evolution, the current state of which is expressed in the form of the lean enterprise model. Nevertheless, despite the undiminished attention and interest for leanness, the literature has failed to keep track of this evolution. For this reason a significant proportion of the literature relies on a rather antiquated vision of leanness.

The paper reviews two major waves of literature criticising leanness with the first focusing on its social aspects and the second questioning its universality mainly with respect to its limited applicability in high variety‐low volume production systems.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that healthcare is the most crucial one in today's perspective. The healthcare sector, in general, is engaged in working on various dimensions simultaneously like the safety, care, quality and cost of services, etc. Still, the desired outcomes from this sector are far away, and it becomes pertinent to address all such issues associated with healthcare on a priority basis for sustaining the outcomes in a long-term perspective. The present study aims to explore the healthcare sector and list out the directly associated enablers contributing to increasing the viability of the healthcare sector. Besides, the interrelationship among the enlisted enablers needs to be studied, which further helps in setting-out the priority to deal with individual enablers based on their impedance in the contribution towards viability increment.

The authors have done an extensive review to list out the enablers of the healthcare sector to perform efficiently and effectively. Further, the attempt has been made on the enablers to rank them by using the modified Total Interpretative Structure Modelling (m-TISM) approach. The validation of the study reveals the importance of enablers based on their position in the hierarchical structure. Further, the MICMAC analysis on the identified enabler is performed to categorize the identified enablers in the different clusters based on their driving power and dependence.

The research tries to envisage the importance of the healthcare sector and its contribution towards national development. The outcomes of the m-TISM model in the present study reveal the noteworthy contribution of the organizational structure in managing the healthcare facilities and represented it as the perspective of future growth. The well-designed organizational structure in the healthcare industry helps in establishing better employee–employer cooperation, workforce coordination and inter-department cooperation.

Every research work has limitations. Likewise, the present research work also has limitations, i.e. input taken for developing the models are from very few experts that may not reflect the opinion of the whole sector.

The healthcare sector is the growing sector in the present-day scenario, and it is essential to keep the quality of treatment in check along with the quantity. The present study has laid down the practical foundations for improvement in the healthcare sector viability. Besides, the study emphasized on accountability of the healthcare sector officials to go with the enablers having the strong driving power for effective utilization of all the resources. This would further help them in customer (patients) satisfaction.

Despite an increase in demand for good quality healthcare facilities worldwide, the growth of this sector is bounded by the economic, demographic, cultural and environmental concerns, etc. The present study proposed a unique framework that provides a better understanding of the enablers. It would further help in playing a key role in increasing the viability of the healthcare sector. The hierarchy developed with the help of m-TISM and MICMAC analysis will help the viewers to recognize the important enablers based on their contribution to the viability improvement of the healthcare sector.

Investigates the relationships between team‐based management systems and organizational effectiveness across a variety of settings throughout the USA. Uses a validated instrument on organizational effectiveness to gather data. Presents survey results to support the claims of team‐based management proponents that the technique improves participants’ productivity, quality, satisfaction, performance, and appears to be effective. However, less than half of the surveyed respondents who implemented team‐based systems indicated that their self‐managed team programmes had failed to achieve their stated objectives of influencing and enhancing organizational effectiveness. A major implication of this study is that the introduction of team‐based programmes into an organization further requires the introduction of multifaceted changes in person‐job relationships and the whole organizational hierarchy.

The purpose of this study is to formulate supplier integration strategy with the aim to eliminate Ohno's manufacturing wastes and empirically examines its influence on lean manufacturing adoption in electronic‐enabled manufacturing supply chains (EMSC).

The proposed theoretical model is tested with the survey data obtained from 558 manufacturers in 17 countries which is stratified into two groups of small/large firms for measuring the significance of measurements.

The influential factors comprising the supplier integration strategy, i.e. information sharing, e‐business systems and policy‐based supplier selection, have positive influence on the long‐term lean manufacturing adoption in small‐ and medium‐sized firms. Besides, the results reveal that manufacturers may commit ongoing use of lean manufacturing only if it has been using regularly.

The study is conducted from the stand point of a manufacturing firm. Hence, the constructs are not appropriate for distributors and retailers. Besides, the concepts measured in the study can only be generalized to small‐ and medium‐sized firms.

Implementing supply strategy in practice requires the collaboration of manufacturers and suppliers, and manufacturers are in better position to select the suppliers in favor to the implementation of lean manufacturing in EMSC. Also, small manufacturers tend to adopt lean manufacturing along with relevant supplier integration tactics due to having less complex organizational structure.

There is a scarcity of papers that study the impact of supplier integration on lean manufacturing through combining practitioner's lean implementation methodology and academia's decision theory. This paper is beneficial to manufacturers who intend to revise their e‐supply strategy in coping with sustainable imitative in recessionary time.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an effective framework for implementing Lean strategies in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).

Based on the integration of LM tools and techniques with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award (MBNQA) criteria a systematic Lean implementation framework for manufacturing SMEs has been proposed. The core values, drivers and tools of the proposed framework were further developed based on case studies in three SMEs in the KRI.

Proposed framework is able to provide a simple pathway for SMEs to systematically implement Lean techniques in seven functional areas in order to create Lean culture in the organisation. Business performance measurement in terms of profitability, customer satisfaction, employee’s satisfaction, competitiveness growth and ergonomic improvement is presented in favour of evaluating Lean outcomes appropriately. It also presents the experience of small firms in implementing Lean programmes to show that Lean is valid in SMEs.

The framework concentrates only on the internal issues of the organisation, while external variables such as national culture and external support are excluded.

The framework assists improvements in SMEs that either initially attempt to start Lean journey or those that are at more advanced levels towards excellent-Lean manufacturing. The framework can also be used as a self-assessment model to determine the degree of Lean readiness.

To the best knowledge of the author, it is the first framework that integrates Lean techniques with MBNQA criteria to support Lean implementation in SMEs. It is also the first study regarding Lean-excellence in the KRI.