EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEAN LEADERSHIP AND LEAN PRACTICE TO ACHIEVE ORGANISATIONAL LEAN THINKING

Cheevers, John (2023) EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LEAN LEADERSHIP AND LEAN PRACTICE TO ACHIEVE ORGANISATIONAL LEAN THINKING. Doctoral thesis, SETU Waterford.

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Abstract

It is widely known that the Lean Thinking concept has been a breakthrough business performance enhancer since it was first embraced by the wider global commercial community in the 1990’s. Furthermore, when an organisation is able to embed lean thinking holistically throughout their organisation, the positive results can move beyond profit and actually enrich the lives of all the employees who work within its realm. However, there is also an acknowledgement that lean implementation failures are unacceptably high with as little as one in ten organisations being able to sustain their efforts. This has caused consternation for both lean academic and practitioners alike and as a result not everyone is convinced that attempting to achieve organisational lean thinking is a worthy business endeavour. This has also resulted in significant academic unrest and discussion regarding the claims and assumptions made within the organizational lean thinking literature. The main concern is the lack of knowledge on how organisations successfully implement and embed organizational lean thinking in the long term. The origins of lean literature are rooted in positive ‘feel-good’, practitioner-written vignettes about lean success stories. Even when the discussion is elevated to consider what has been going wrong with lean, it is still limited to positivistic case studies. If and when leadership is discussed as an enabler for sustenance of lean thinking, it tends to focus on listing required leadership traits. There has been little consideration of the complexity of how organisational lean thinking works and the dynamics between lean leadership and lean practice to sustain it. This study has taken an interpretive research approach and utilised a single case-study to explore and fully understand the phenomenon of organisational lean thinking. The findings are rich and have uncovered new knowledge that will help untangle the complexity and provide guidance to lean leaders.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Lean management, lean leadership
Departments or Groups:	*NONE OF THESE*
Divisions:	School of Business > Department of Management and Organization
Depositing User:	Derek Langford
Date Deposited:	07 Nov 2023 16:25
Last Modified:	07 Nov 2023 16:25
URI:	https://repository.wit.ie/id/eprint/7750

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