Leader values, followers' information sharing, and team effectiveness: Advancing lean team cultures

When work teams fail to sustain lean management methods, people frequently blame the “organizational culture.” Empirical tests of lean cultural content are nevertheless scarce. This study examined a lean team effectiveness model, comprising of relevant parts of Schwartz’s work-value theory as well as Ilgen, Hollenbeck, Johnson, and Jundt’s (2005) IMOI model. Two work value clusters of lean team leaders and their followers’ information sharing behavior are hypothesized to explain lean team effectiveness. Based on valid survey scales, we surveyed team leaders and members (N = 429) and tested the hypotheses with the aggregated dataset; this comprised of 25 lean teams involved in commercial and public services and in manufacturing. We were able to remove considerable common source-bias. As expected, 1) lean team effectiveness was significantly linked to high scores on leader self-transcendence values and low scores on leader conservation values; 2) followers in effective lean teams were significantly more engaged in information sharing than those in the less effective teams; and 3) a partial mediation effect of follower information sharing (and thus followers’ “power of words”) was established between leaders’ self-transcendence values and lean team effectiveness. Practical recommendations pertaining to value-based selection of lean team leaders, and their presumed role-modeling of information sharing are given; their teams clearly thrive if their members are enabled to share information. In order to further uncover the precise content of (effective) lean team cultures, and how that may differ from similar non-lean teams, more comparative lean team effectiveness research is proposed

Industry 4.0 as a moderator on the relationship between lean and operational performance

Due to both convergent and divergent characteristics of Industry 4.0 and Lean Production (LP), it is unclear whether their concurrent implementation may increase performance. This paper examines the moderating effect of Industry 4.0 on the relationship between LP and operational performance improvement within a developing economy. A survey was distributed among 147 Brazilian manufacturing companies that had implemented both LP and Industry 4.0. Findings indicate that, although LP’s low setup practices enhance performance, its effect varies when Industry 4.0 practices are also adopted. Managers should thus carefully prioritize the parallel adoption of different bundles of Industry 4.0 and LP practices

Lean leadership behaviors in healthcare organizations:A systematic literature review

This systematic literature review compares contextual similarities and differences of leader behaviours across various hierarchical levels and lean maturity levels. Since healthcare organisations are generally unique, the successful implementation of Lean Healthcare likely demands typical supportive leader behaviours at all hierarchical levels. However, the 107 reviewed articles indicate that most of the healthcare leader behaviours are similar to those of manufacturing leaders, but more relations-oriented in the early lean stages, rather than task-oriented. As most healthcare studies examined leaders at the operational and tactical levels, future multi-level research should also study strategical managers and the longitudinal effects of their behaviours

Kaizen event effectiveness and problem-solving style awareness:A video-based field examination

Effective lean adoption requires running Kaizen events (KE) effectively. Yet, the behavioural tendencies of each of the team members involved in such events often hamper KE outcomes. This longitudinal study examines whether team members’ awareness of their own and team members’ problem-solving styles impacts KE effectiveness. After a survey about these styles, we video-filmed two events of nine kaizen teams: One prior to and the other after a team workshop intervention that boosted members’ awareness of these tendencies. Our finding is that being aware of one’s own and team members’ problem-solving styles has an impact on KE effectiveness and behaviours

Perceived support for innovation and individual innovation readiness as mediators between transformational leadership and innovative work behaviour

While transformational leadership is often seen to induce innovative work behaviour of employees, little is known about the psychological mechanisms through which this effect occurs. This research conceptualises the mediating effect of perceived support for innovation and individual innovation readiness in a series between transformational leadership on innovative work behaviour. We use the responses of 428 employees from six service organisations in Singapore to test our three-path mediation model. As hypothesised, the data supported the three-path mediation model. Results revealed a partial mediating role of support for innovation and a fully mediating role of individual innovation readiness. This finding is useful for designing and implementing effective human resource and organisational development interventions, with the objective of facilitating innovation in the workforce

Behavioural dynamics in high-performing continuous improvement teams

We have explored from an Organisational-Behavioural perspective, why a Continuous Improvement (CI) team performs well. We report on the first part of a longitudinal study on intra-team behaviour of five, carefully selected, high-performing CI teams in five major Dutch organizations. Not only did we conduct a survey among team members and leaders, we also conducted informal interviews and analysed extensively the field notes. Preliminary results show the importance of five dynamics, such as ‘social talk’ within those teams. Team results were validated during subsequent team feedback sessions. A follow-up study will illuminate how these and related behaviours evolve over time

Improving lean team performance: leadership and workfloor dynamics

This Ph.D. thesis reports four different studies that were undertaken to identify and examine the content of human dynamics that may account for sustainable lean team performance, at multiple organizational levels: higher-level leaders (including top- and middle managers), team leaders, and team members. The thesis emphasizes human work values and behaviors, also because an Organizational Behavior focus was called for in the advancement of lean Operations Management, and work values are seen as important underlying determinants of (lean) work behavior. \ud While effective lean teams are often regarded as self-managed work teams, we found that top or higher-level managers play key roles in training and developing lean team members and their leaders. Managers showcase their desired behavioral patterns to their followers by exemplary role modeling relations-oriented behavior, and airing their self-transcendence and openness-to-change type values. In this way, higher-leader behavior is cascaded to the lowest organizational level, so that each workfloor member is focused on and committed to achieving optimal customer value through continuous process improvement. Also higher-level managers’ guidance and clarity in terms of organizational strategy and structure, as well as aligned investment in lean and people development, is shown to facilitate lean team performance. In other words, despite frequent calls to simply “scrap” middle management, a remark often heard on workfloors during initial attempts to implement lean, if such managers are good at translating organizational strategy to their (lean) teams, they will not become obsolete.\ud These insights may guide managers who envision a lean transformation on their workfloors. Also those who advise lean teams and their leaders may direct their interventions more at leader-behavioral development, instead of merely “rolling out” a predetermined set of lean tools such as Value Stream Mapping, 5S, or Kanban. Such leader coaching could take place on the basis of mapping personal-value constellations (e.g., through a card sorting technique used in chapter II of the dissertation) and subsequent reflecting upon how their own values influence their own behaviors. Furthermore, those who select, train, and promote leaders may feel the need to enrich their leader profiles with the values and behaviors reported in the dissertation

What are the values and behaviors of effective lean leaders?

In this exploratory study, we come to specify values and behaviors of six highly effective Lean middle managers, operating in three Dutch firms that have adopted Lean Production methods. With them we held interviews, surveys and video-analyzed regular staff meetings. For exemplary Lean leaders, key values are ‘honesty’ and ‘participation and teamwork.’ Their two most frequently found behaviors are: ‘actively listening’ and ‘building and sustaining trust relations;’ these were shown more often when more experienced in Lean. Our findings and resulting hypothetical model calls for longitudinal field designs to study Lean leadership and Lean team cultures

The Middle Managerial Process of Strategically Aligning Work-floor Employees:An Exploratory Study

We know relatively little about how a formulated strategy is translated into results via employee strategic alignment. Middle managers are often noted as crucial actors in aligning employees to strategic goals. This paper examines the process that takes place at the middle managerial level vis-à-vis their work-floor employees, to ensure that their behaviours are in line with strategy. We used a mixed-method approach of 20 interviews with middle managers and six observations of their staff meetings. The resulting process model provides insight in the complexity of strategic alignment of how middle managers bring their work-floor employees from strategic awareness to showing seven categories of strategically aligned behaviours. Our primary contribution is that we demonstrate how the strategic alignment process works at the lowest level of the organisation. A better understanding of such micro-practices enables practitioners to effectively influence this process and strategically aligned behaviours through training and development