Characteristics of a work organization from a Lean perspective

Abstract

:Implementation of lean practices results in significant changes in an organization. Current research in lean production primarily focuses on examining relationships between the implementation of lean production (LP) and the performance of the organization; however, there is a need to assess the implications of large-scale changes such as lean production on work design characteristics and employee outcomes. The purpose of this article is to study the impact of lean production on work design characteristics, such as autonomy, task identity and skill variety, and employee outcomes. This article proposes a conceptual framework that indicates key LP practices and their influences on work characteristics and employee outcomes.Current research in LP identifies transformations in lean models inspired by sociotechnical principles. This article presents a comprehensive literature review of an evaluation of LP based on sociotechnical design principles. This evaluation contributes toward developing an insight for the proposed framework of the work design characteristics in a lean environment. Finally, a causal loop diagram is used to derive theoretical implications of the conceptual framework proposed.