Lean management and organizational culture: evidences from hpm project

Lean management (LM) is a managerial approach for process improvement widely adopted in several sectors. Even though many successful stories testify its effectiveness in reducing waste while at the same time improving customer service, some cases of LM implementation resulted in failures. Recently,debate has centered around the role of organizational culture (OC) in influencing LM effectiveness. This paper aims to contribute to this debate by examining whether the successful implementation of LM depends on a certain OC profile and the adoption of soft LM practices, i.e. those related to work organization, human resource management, relations or strategy. Data was analyzed from the High Performance Manufacturing (HPM) project dataset using a multi - group approach. The results revealed that high - performance LM plants differ from low-performance LM plants both in terms of OC and extent of adoption of soft practices. Thus, it is possible to conclude that there is an OC profile that makes LM more effective, and what really differentiates high and low performers is a greater use of soft (rather than hard) LM practices. Taken together, these results suggest that a company should develop a certain OC in order to succeed in LM implementation and soft practices can help to reach this aim, since they can modify the beliefs and behavior of employees and managers alike , thus creating the right OC.