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Abstract

Organizations striving for operational excellence face new challenges in a world increasingly characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity [1]. For decades, one of the answers to achieving operational excellence has been to pursue a continuous improvement culture such as through the Lean philosophy in order to engage and empower employees to continuously optimize resource utilization and thereby increase competitiveness [2]. However, many organizations only get short-term gains out of their efforts and fail with an actual Lean transformation and frequently, cultural change is mentioned as the hardest to manage [3]. At all organizational levels, people get under pressure that frequently leads to behavior un-favoring long-term excellence and certainly inhibiting continuous improvement culture. Psychological mechanisms induced by fear and high tempo are possible explanations.

This paper aims for investigating whether positive practices at work [4] can accelerate transformation to a Lean improvement culture and contribute to improved organizational effectiveness.

The study was carried out as an exploratory case study. The selected organization was identified due to its history with experimenting with positive practices and explicit focus on and strategic need for developing a Lean improvement culture. During the study, the researchers had extensive access to investigate daily operational improvement practices at the manufacturing plant. First, all improvement practices were mapped and the positive practices identified. Second, the improvement practices were analysed to assess their impact on developing Lean improvement culture together with a discussion of the difference between traditional improvement practices and the identified positive practices. Third, the positive practices with the highest assessed impact were further analysed in depth to investigate to what degree they also contributed to organizational effectiveness.

References

1. Bennett, N. & Lemoine, G. J. (2014). What VUCA really means for you. Harvard Business Review, 92(1), 27.

2. Arlbjørn, J. S. & Freytag, P. V. (2013). Evidence of lean: a review of international peer-reviewed journal articles. International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 25(2), 174-205.

3. Liker, J. K. (2004). The Toyota Way. New York: McGraw-Hill.

4. Cameron, K., Mora, C., Leutscher, T. & Calarco, M. (2011). Effects of Positive Practices on Organizational Effectiveness. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(3), 266-308.

Projects

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